


In Love or Alone

by Kitsubasa



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Asexual Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, Eye Trauma, F/M, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, it's non-canon because dr samuels is here (i miss her), slice of life with a bodycount
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22048438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitsubasa/pseuds/Kitsubasa
Summary: Maya leaves Pandora for a while, but soon enough, she’s sent back on an interstellar fetch quest. Krieg has not been coping. They’ve got a few days to work through it together and what remains of Helios in their way. Best get talking. [post-BL2, pre-BL3; non-canonical as of Fustercluck]
Relationships: Krieg/Maya (Borderlands)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 109





	1. a party divided

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was started in June, pre-BL3, and while none of it is outright canon non-compliant (yet) it sits a bit weird with some of the audio logs in the game. Re-engineering it would’ve taken too long — it took six months to write, as-is — so if anything doesn’t quite match the tone of their relationship there, mea culpa etc.

The past few years packed neatly — so neatly — into Maya’s rucksack. Didn’t even need a suitcase. A couple of books, her favourite preset cards for the Quick-Change, the most legal items from her armoury. Public transport with luggage checks and scans so a lot of what she’d collected on Pandora couldn’t travel with her. Nothing important enough to hurt. 

Leaving the world would do her good. 

Yet here she was, loitering as long as she could in the shuttle terminal’s former food court. Board in twenty, break atmosphere in thirty, meet the interplanetary ship in less than an hour. Soar to somewhere humid, or somewhere urban. She’d barely seen anything between here and Athenas, let alone the further star systems. Zer0 was going with her to make sure she didn’t take the wrong transfer when they reached the nearest major starport. 

A safety net under every jump and still she couldn’t bear to take any. Had she forgotten to say goodbye to Tina? Not covered enough of her tattoos to cross systems? Left an oven on, somehow, despite never owning or even touching one?

“Pre-flight jitters?” Axton asked, offering her a drink from a broken vending machine. The terminal wasn’t on the books anymore. Ellie pulled a few favours with some off-planet friends for a shuttle to take passengers as it dropped a load of stock to her. Otherwise, the building’d been unoccupied since Dahl left. The power flickered in and out from the old generator they’d hooked up, and the only good refreshments were vacuum-packed ultra-salty peanuts, or electric blue vitamin water.

She took it and fidgeted through each layer it’d been sealed with. Break the ring, unscrew the cap, tear through the vacuum seal. Knock back a mouthful. Swallowing, she nodded, and coughed a bit from her haste. “Haven’t left Pandora since I first arrived. I almost forgot there’s a whole galaxy out there. It’s a lot to take in when you’ve done as little exploring as I have.”

He laughed as he sat on the cracked plastic bench across the table from her. “You’re gonna have fuuun.” 

The terminal didn’t smell too bad — wildlife had gotten into a lot of the perishables already, but kept their own mess minimal — so the worst part of loitering inside was the busted furniture. Despite the lack of use every seat in the place was either down a leg or visibly close to snapping. 

As he reclined, tipping back his own bottle of Energade Bluberri Blast, the crack widened, and the whole bench split in half, dropping him on the dusty linoleum floor. The Bluberri Blast fell on his chest and splashed across his front. He cursed.

Shifting carefully so as not to damage her own seat, Maya leaned over for a clearer look. “Okay there?”

“Like —” he rolled into a crouch and batted the pieces of bench aside “— I was saying: you’ll get more fun offworld than we’ll get here. Sal and I’re looking down the barrel of a lotta runaround for the key, or whatever Lilith’s sensing out there.”

She shook her head. “Maybe. Of course going to other planets is exciting but I’ll either be alone or with Zer0. Who’s fantastic. But he’s not you, and Sal, and Gaige, and Brick, and Mordecai, and Tina, and —”

“There’s other people in the galaxy. Good to meet ‘em if you can,” he said.

Thank God she’d been saved from the next name on the list. She wasn’t sure she could say it and sound sincere. They’d had a disagreement, or what seemed like a disagreement. Avoided each other throughout last night. Parted without a proper goodbye. Of all the insults the team had ever used, the bad-faith reactions and insensitive questions, the thing that’d hurt the worst was apparently an invitation off-world.

Maybe Pandora understood Krieg on a level Maya couldn’t. Maybe that was why he’d chosen to stay here, rather than go with her. “What if those people aren’t as good?” she asked. Her bench creaked beneath her.

“Some of them’ve gotta be. We’re not exactly saints.”

“Don’t —”

“Yourself included.” Shuffling his feet around, Axton turned a circle, until he faced the departure board. It’d turned on with the power but no-one’d bothered connecting it to the launch system. No flights displayed, local time still listed as midnight despite the sun outside. Okay — so he couldn’t check the schedule. Regardless; he shuffled the remaining 190 degrees to face Maya again. “Won’t be long ‘til lift-off. Miss the shuttle and Ellie’ll kill us.”

Fitting the cap back on the bottle, Maya stood. She lifted the rucksack from beside her and slung it over a shoulder. The first leg was a short ride but the second would take the rest of the day (such as it was, in space, between solar cycles) and offer less leg-room. This would be her last real stretch for a while so she had a totally legitimate reason to take advantage of it. 

Moving clear of their table and weaving between the others toward the interior wall she took the longest possible route through the room to get to the corridor. Signboards with smeared chalk or burst lightbulbs. Empty silver serving trays set in the counters. Advertising for Dahl-affiliated ice-cream and soda brands. Would it be different on a Maliwan planet, or were the logos the only meaningful contrast? How about Tediore? She ran her hand along the plexiglass cabinet. Engines roared through the corridor ahead. Soon. Soon she’d know what was out there.

Axton walked alongside her and clapped her shoulder to encourage her forward. “Got your papers? Comfy shoes?”

“Yeah,” she said. They were coming to the end of the stores, to a kiosk full of blank departure cards and messy lilac spiderwebs, drunk-dialling any flies left in the vicinity to come by for a while. She could’ve stopped at the souvenir shop at the entrance, stolen a plush skag or a watercolour postcard to remember the place, but that wouldn’t  _ really  _ capture the spirit of Pandora, would it? She paused by the kiosk. “Could you take a picture, though?”

He quirked his eyebrow and pulled out his ECHO device. “What’m I getting?”

The air around her warped and fractured in blue static pattern. “Put it on burst.”

Launching from their compartments the departure cards swarmed around her in a paper vortex. Together they lifted from the ground, into that classic black hole of Phaselock energy, slowly compressing inward — until —

“Now!”

He hit the button and held it as long as he could through the ensuing blast: Maya, midair, with a blissful smile, at the epicentre of a bureaucratic explosion, cards flicking past the camera frame-by-frame, ‘fill upon leaving Pandora’, ‘what was the purpose of your visit’, ‘how long was your stay’.

‘— cannot carry any local flora and fauna with you offworld —’

🔪🔪🔪

The shuttle shot from the terminal skyward to the atmosphere. Helios had fallen a year or two ago — far be it from him to count — and ever since no-one’d gone up or down. Moonshots, shuttles, couriers, no craft of any class or size that he’d seen. In an interconnected galaxy Pandora was a planet on its own. Of course she’d be the person to change that. If he accepted she was human (he tried, oh, he tried) she was still apart from the rest of their species. Stellar energy trapped in solid form, sparking ahead. 

Krieg sat in the sandswept former-carpark and waited for the remaining trio to exit the spaceport. He’d put his saw aside, left his hands trailing, raking lines parallel to his legs. Rare quiet, the inner voice the louder of the two. 

_ Wonder if she’ll call. Think there’s service in this system? Probably not. Wouldn’t make sense with Hyperion gone. No-one important needs it. Nearest with full coverage’ll be — the Edens? Edens’re close, aren’t they? C’mon. Where’re the Edens? _

“YOU GET IN THE SWAMP.” Clenching his fist he took a handful of sand and threw it in his own face. It scattered across the ridges of his mask, prompting a growl, and another pointless handful. “UGH.” Flopping back on the ground, he sprawled his limbs out. “SHOULDN’T NEED A CALL.”

_ Both of us’re gonna be sad if she doesn’t. _

“SADDER THAT I LISTENED! NOT LISTENING ANYMORE.”

_ We agreed to stay on Pandora. Mutual. If you regret it — _

Rolling onto his front, he groaned, the mask filter muffling most of the sound. “PICKED A BAD CUT AND NOW WE’VE GOTTA COOK IT.” There he lay, defeated. “YOUR FAULT.”

The inner voice tutted, and walked circles around his mind. It made him dizzy when it did that. Vertigo-inducing. Wasn’t clear how it worked, wading through a mind like a teaspoon through coffee, folding his thoughts in on themselves. It complained a lot about how outer Krieg wouldn’t let it think but it did the same to him. Maybe because they shared a brain; couldn’t both use it at once. Try to access when a process is in motion and catch yourself on the blades for your trouble.  _ Neither of us can go offworld. Too dangerous. _

“NO-ONE CAN HEAR US SCREAM.”

_ Lots of people want us to. Good, you paid attention.  _ The inner voice tugged at his legs and shoulders, encouraging him to stand, gently flexing his muscles without moving them any meaningful distance.  _ There's Hyperion reports on the ECHOnet that make us sound like a useful asset. No-one's bothering us here but imagine what the other corps would do if we landed in their territory. _

"CORPSE."

_ If we're lucky. Besides…  _

"WHERE'S THE FUN?"

_ Pandora suits us, doesn't it? Fit in with the locals. _

He stood straight. Raised a hand over his forehead. Craned his neck to follow the fuel trail — shuttle no longer visible — as it struck through to space. Relaxing his other hand in his pocket, his face stayed neutral under the mask. He let out a slow, forceful breath, scattering some of the crusted sand from his filter. This felt familiar. A launch, the melancholy, all quiet in the spaceport carpark. They moved in sync. Not a muscle out of alignment. Happened sometimes. Never during anything good. 

Like a child afraid of being jinxed, he dropped his stance to a crouch and took his saw from by his feet. "WOULD'VE PROTECTED US," he said, scrunching his eyes closed.

Though the inner voice wanted to keep watching the trail, he wouldn't allow it. It thumped at the back of his eyes like a blast door. Migraine. Lots worse than migraines out there. Ignore, ignore, ignore.  _ What kind of trip would that be? Babysitting someone who shouldn't need it?  _ Maybe they wouldn't have so many headaches if it didn't love creating them. This explosive force in his head, which insisted it knew who he was and what was best for him, when it couldn't muster so much as a human face or a name to introduce itself. Who would trust that? A bodiless jumble of noise and pain? Sometimes it was persuasive but when he followed its advice he usually regretted it.

Today, for instance. "COULD'VE PROTECTED HER."

_ From what? _

Thump. This hit broke the doors open. They were looking at their feet, ungainly huge, scuffing through the sand to reveal asphalt below. This place had functioned until it was abandoned. "THE BEASTS AND THE BOTS AND THE BIRDS AND THE BEES AND THE BRAT-TA-TAT-TAT." It condescended to him so often — he was capable, too, not with words or people, sure, but with his saw and his heart and his instincts. They were alive because of him.

Thump. It flicked his chin and forced him to stare at the empty sky. There was nothing for them to see! Why dwell on it? For the 'psycho' part of the pair he had a stronger grasp on reality. They had let her go. She was gone. 

Because — THUMP — they were both afraid of what would happen if they tried to go too. It was right. They weren't safe out in the universe. The systems overlapped in a venn diagram, combinations of people wanting them dead or captive or under the knife, the only outlying circle Pandora. He could shout about wanting to be with her but he didn't want the consequences either.

So he'd stay here. "FINE."  _ Good.  _ This was a life. "FORGET IT."  _ We forgot everything else.  _ Free and healthy. "JUST US."  _ No-one deserves us but each other. _

Their ECHO device chirped. Taking it from their belt they held it in view. An image beamed from the display.

Maya surrounded by a storm of departure cards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter should be available by the weekend; everything’s prewritten and just needs some minor editing. It’s been a while but on the off-chance anyone read my previous fics I can promise in advance there’s actual reciprocal Psyren this time! Eventually. We’ll get there.
> 
> Chapter 2... Maya accepts an errand, and Krieg is despondent


	2. for want of a pool cleaner

Seven months into her travels, Maya’s ECHO device brightened with a notification from Lilith:

> vault status??

Opening it took her to the string of similar messages in her ECHO history. Scrolling through them, the word ‘vault’ ran along the screen like contrast stitch on a jacket: ‘found a vault map?’, ‘where is vault?’, ‘progress on vault hunt?’, interwoven with spam messages from Claptrap’s burner devices. 

She’d left them unanswered, but when she’d received those messages, she’d been sober. Today she’d landed on Eden-6 and — when Hammerlock failed to meet her at the spaceport — found herself tumbling into a dram or two of whiskey at a rickety old wooden saloon. That meant courage, and resources. Sure, people here wore funny clothes and drawled even before they got a drink in them, but a bar was a bar was a bar and bars had information. Call it a saloon? Whatever, she knew what it was. And rather than struggle to find her own response to Lilith’s question she would get someone else to to do it.

Or maybe saloons  _ were  _ different to Moxxi’s. This was the first planet she’d visited without any of the franchise on it; who knew what conditions had caused that gap in the market? There was a tiny thrill in the realisation, that she’d finally found somewhere that either didn’t want its liquor served in red velvet and stripes, or that well-travelled Moxxi had no interest in. Though the fact the bar was stocked with the same brands as always kept the thrill tiny. Cheers to intergalactic capitalism!

Finishing whichever dram this was she swiped the back of her hand across her mouth and approached the bartender, resetting the ECHO device on her belt as she went. This was a popular, accessible establishment a quick Catch-a-Ride away from the spaceport; the staff would hear so many rumours they could walk her to a vault in their sleep. Watch out Lilith, because the hot name in vault hunting Sirens is about to be Maya.

She collided with the sticky countertop a little harder than she’d intended. “I am,” she said, putting her tattooed arm forward, “a Siren, and I am hunting for a vault.” This was probably self-explanatory but there was never any harm in an additional verbal explanation.

The woman behind the bar wore a sunny yellow dress with a stained apron pulled over it, and kept her hair in a lopsided updo. Like much of Eden-6 she seemed a few centuries out of date — but that had its own charm. The only clue to the real year was the new-release set of Jakobs pistols holstered on every available body part. “Wow! A Siren.” She did not sound impressed. 

“Yes,” Maya affirmed. “Where is a vault?”

The bartender swung her hip out and emphasised the prize piece of her collection, a polished Unforgiven with the safety strap already unsnapped. “None out here, sorry to say.”

If she was scared of a gun she wouldn’t have made it this far in the galaxy. “What kind of self-respecting planet doesn’t have a vault on it?”

“The kind that won’t let a tourist walk all over it just ‘cause they’ve got shiny tattoos,” she said, putting her hand just above the hip holster, “as such I’m gonna recommend you either order another drink, or take a walk in the swamp and cool yourself a bit.”

Part of her liked the idea of another drink. The Pandoran part, if she thought about it, which didn’t mind the prospect of a fight with thirty locals for a sliver of information and a boost to her reputation. The Athenian part said that letting it alone was safer, since she was by herself and not as quick on the draw as Zer0 or Sal would’ve been. “If I have another drink it’ll be bad,” she pondered aloud, inviting the bartender to tiebreak between the two halves of her mind.

“In that case, the swamp.”

Swamps were deep and wet. Athenas and Pandora were predominantly dry planets. It could be a fun local experience! Or just sticky. “Any other walks available? Like — ooh, maybe a nice forest track?”

The bartender leaned in, tense but no longer hostile as she realised she’d succeeded in de-escalating the situation. “Honest with you?” She gave Maya’s tattoos a pat. “Recommend the swamp.” Then she winked. 

It didn’t seem like a flirtatious gesture but Maya gave her a look of warning anyway, to be sure. “Why…?”

Again, the bartender was annoyed. “The swamp. The swamp has — look, someone can help at the swamp. Try the swamp, lady.”

Oh! This’d been a complicated, obtuse offer of help. Why hadn’t she said so sooner? With an awkward thumbs up, Maya reversed from the counter. “Could’ve made that clearer, but thank you,” she said, “and thank you for the drink… s…?” However many it’d been she shouldn’t be having more. She slapped a mental gold star on herself for recognising that.

“Three of them.”

“Cooooool.” Turning to face the quaint little swinging saloon doors she kneed them open while waving behind her. “Nice talk! See you later!” The doors spat her into a muggy bayou afternoon.

Day drinking wasn’t a daily ritual yet but it had become a weekly hobby. In the outer systems there wasn’t much else to do if she wasn’t on an active vault hunt, and there hadn’t been a successful planet yet. She’d never have avoided Lilith’s messages if she could craft a decent reply for them but the reality of the situation felt too shitty to want to recount it to someone else. Out on her own she was failing at her job and the suspicion was creeping onto her, one subtle, spidery leg at a time, that if it weren’t for her friends she would’ve been just as useless on Pandora.

Which of course meant Lilith and Claptrap weren’t her only unanswered messages. They spread across enough apps that, looking at each, she could feign ignorance of the longer list. Zer0 mailed every few weeks to offer contracts. Axton and Gaige tagged her in ECHOnet memes with the rest of the crew. Sal drunk-dialled from around Pandora, his location code changing daily. Brick, Mordecai, and Tina streamed their weirder demolition jobs which she’d watch without commenting if they coincided with a flight.

Krieg, unsurprisingly, had no presence on the ECHOnet or in her notifications. She’d never seen him use his device for outbound comms and she suspected he didn’t know how. If it rang he’d respond. Otherwise… 

Well, thinking he hadn’t called out of incompetence was nicer than any alternative. 

She told herself she’d let them in on any discoveries or achievements but she’d had neither since she and Zer0 parted. He’d gone to work for Atlas on Promethea —  _ ‘the client is a / reliable meal ticket / also, he’s a bro’ _ — from the description alone she’d felt like she’d be intruding on something if she followed. Since then she’d been through a dozen planets with nothing but a replenished armoury and some Siren hunter corpses to show for it. 

Boredom aside, no wonder she’d turned to drink and — and taking tips from spaceport-adjacent bartenders to look for millennia-old alien ruins on a local nature walk. Ugh. The worst part was that she was excited about it. Whether or not the lead was valid, it  _ would  _ be refreshing, and it  _ would  _ be her most interesting stop in the past week.

Stumbling off the saloon’s porch and across the dusty centre of the outpost she took her ECHO device in hand. Exiting her message history she found the map screen and spun it around until her facing was clear.

North-west to the nearest swamp, with a 4-star Jakobs-owned sightseeing track that took an average of three hours to walk. That’d put her back in town at sunset, probably sober enough to drive to the Hammerlock family lodge. High fitness requirement, waders recommended.

Sounded… refreshing.

At the mercy of the map and the bartender she set out. With any luck she’d stay tipsy for the worst of the terrain. This trip hadn’t been lucky, though, and she wasn’t holding her breath.

🔪🔪🔪

Whether it was six or eight months didn’t matter: it’d been over half a year. 

Krieg sat at a table with a pile of junk in the centre as it was divvied piece by piece between the present party.

“May I interest anyone in:” Brick lifted the next item out. “A — yellow knit hat, mild damage, says ‘I <3 ACCOUNTING’. Going once? Going twice!” He slapped his free hand on the tabletop in lieu of a gavel, eyes roaming his audience for a taker.

“Who’s a-counting?” Tina asked from behind her newly amassed collection of grenades, face just visible over the top of the stack.

“‘S’like, the numbers department of a company,” Mordecai said, idly handing Talon another rakk steak. The pair were perched together on a large, mismatched office chair; her on an arm, him on the seat proper. “Hey girl, want a hat?” As she took the last piece from his hand, he reached under her beak and gave her chin a scratch. She croaked at him and her eyes fluttered closed. “Just attention, ah? Yeah, that’s what I thought.” They cooed at each other in unison.

“HATS FOR THE HAT GOD,” Krieg bellowed, and brought both fists down so hard it knocked Tina’s grenades over and ruffled Talon’s feathers. “A TITHE OF HATS FOR HE.” He was already wearing a ten gallon — Pandoran summers were no joke — and his mask, but he could find a place for another.

Tina grabbed a grenade teetering too close to the edge. “Give Monsieur his counting hat, s'il vous plaît, that he might chill.” She raised a coquettish finger to her lips, then with a flourish, replaced the grenade on the shortened pile. 

“Gone! To the guy in the orange pants.” Brick hurled the hat from the top of the table to the bottom where Krieg caught it, tassels and all.

He pulled it over the rest of his headwear and let out a satisfied laugh. “GOD OF HATS.”

“Yeah, buddy, good for you. Okay. Next we got: a genu-ine, one-of-a-kind pair of DecoraFelt fuzzy dice, perfect for folks who like a bit’a whimsy on their windshield. Who among us is worth —”

“Me! Me! Me!” Tina hopped in her seat, almost dislodging the grenades she’d just restacked.

“You can’t drive!”

“Could if  _ sooomeooone  _ activated a Catch-a-Ride account for me.”

“C’mon, Tina, that’d be irresponsible.”

“Pfft. Lettin’ your little girl play with explosives is irresponsible, this’d just be, like, normal parenting. Wheels for Tina! Wheels! For! Tina!”

“So I should confiscate the grenades, then?”

“Mooordyyy, Brick’s being mean.”

He glanced from Talon and shrugged at them both. “I’unno. She’s what, like, 16? Long as we supervise don’t see why a car’d be so bad.” As he thought it through, Talon sidled onto his arm and solicited another pat. “Supervision’s important though, Tina. Don’t care if it gets totalled but I do care if you get hurt. Someone’s gotta be handy to call a doctor. Or uh. Whatever we’re usin’ for medical at the moment. Anyone manage to find an option other than Zed?”

As the three of them continued to discuss healthcare, driving lessons, and other practical matters, Krieg’s attention waned, and he felt himself drifting from his seat to look out from the balcony nearby. 

The Backburner still wasn’t much, but they’d invested plenty into improvements; over their tenure a series of habitable, usable buildings had appeared around the central pond. A few shops, an extension for the bar, and some boarding houses for whoever else made it through the desert. They’d torn pieces out of other settlements and pushed them together with amateurish joinery. A house might have walls from the Helios wreckage, windows and doors from a bandit camp, and a corrugated roof pried from the Sanctuary blast radius. It would leak in the acidic rainfall. Swelter on a windless day. Regardless: they’d built it, it was home, for as long as it lasted.

It wouldn’t last. Buckling at the waist he dropped himself over the guardrail like clothes on a washing line. The inner voice hadn’t had a lot to say since Zer0 and Maya left. Didn’t care for the people it’d been left with. ‘Course it added the obvious commentary —  _ don’t stick forks in sockets, don’t threaten to eat people, don’t try to eat people  _ — but the social demands had stopped. It wasn’t using him as an interpreter. He’d sat with Mordecai and watched the stupid Duchess show for a whole evening and — get this — it hadn’t said a word. No nonsense about  _ society  _ or  _ respectability  _ or whatever-the-hell.

Ate some candy with the wrappers on, to test how apathetic the inner voice could be, and it let him finish the whole packet. So he ate another. He ate three packets before getting told off, and his stomach had to do it. Hallelujah! Then he drank a bottle of spoiled wine Moxxi had left to turn into vinegar. She told him off too but it was nice when she did it. Felt like someone cared.

Trouble with the situation was, between inner voice shutting up and Maya moving out, there weren’t a lot of people trying to talk to him. Not actively. Brick and Mordecai invited him on trips like the weekly salvage run, Tina invited him to tea parties, but any warm body could handle those tasks. Didn’t know a lot but he knew that. Here he was. Out of the conversation. Unimportant. Set a shack on fire for attention?

_ Don’t set anyone on fire. _

The least it could do was talk properly!! It used to love talking properly. Loved being proper.

Grabbing a lower rung of the guardrail and holding his arms in place, Krieg flipped his legs over his head so he hung off the balcony, a few floors above ground. Releasing he dropped into the shallow pond below, square on his feet. Splash! … Splish, splish, he lost both his hats. Walked on, toward Moxxi’s, in case there were people there or maybe she would sell him an interesting drink.

From the sand and onto the boards of the bar; there ahead of him were Gaige and Axton, sat with an untouched bowl of peanuts and colorful umbrella-topped cocktails. Both of them wore sunglasses; he had a ring of cheap, plastic flowers around his neck, she had a pair of flip-flops. The rest of the patrons (not many) were avoiding them, the jukebox crooned a suspenseful old frontier song, and Moxxi had turned to the shelves at the back.

He took the empty stool beside them and drummed on the countertop. “SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS!” When Moxxi failed to turn he drummed louder. “SHOTS!! SHOTS!! SHOTS!!” Someone, please!

“Not. Right. Now,” Gaige said, turning to face him and lowering her sunglasses.

“TEQUILA!” he protested, matching her gaze.

Moxxi thunked a bottle of brandy from the shelf to the bench below. She uncapped it, threw the cap aside, and filled the half-made old-fashioned in front of her. Turning around to reveal wild eyes she stared at Axton as she drained every drop from the glass. Finished, she slammed it back on the bench without breaking eye contact. “How,” she said, “did you manage to upset a  _ Pandoran travel company  _ enough to get us banned?”

He pulled at his collar. “Err. Long story.”

“The way I see it,” Gaige said with an anxious smile, “if their transports didn’t survive our visit to the office, we toootally wouldn’t’ve wanted to fly anywhere on them. No fail-safes. No back-ups! I for one am glad we’re taking our money elsewhere.”

“Our holiday is ruined,” Moxxi said, “what am I going to tell Ellie?”

“We’ll find another company, no sweat,” Axton said. He took a sip from his cup, umbrella bobbing against his upper lip.

“Before her birthday tomorrow?”

Okay. Okay okay okay. These two had botched a mission and Moxxi was mad about it. How was that Krieg’s problem? Bars served drinks. He wanted a drink. Therefore, he should be given a drink. “SPINAL FLUID?” he ventured, looking between the three of them. When none of them continued through their impasse, he made a confused gesture around the cluster.

Eager for an out, Axton neatly pulled his stool back and — Gaige behind him, treading on his heels — made for the exit. “Working on it, Mox, working on it! Got some alternatives to get a quote from. Hahaha. Hahaha! It’ll be fine.” He saluted her as he turned out of view.

Seconds later Moxxi sank her elbows next to Krieg, a low groan and a haze of bitters-scented breath emitting from her mouth. Around the bar, the patrons migrated to their normal positions, someone flicking a credit in the jukebox for an upbeat song. Despite the feigned attempt at normalcy no-one joined them at the counter. Not quite yet. From the awkward position where she was leaning, she craned her neck to acknowledge him. "The lot of us need to get off this planet," she said, "we're going stir crazy."

"WHO ARE WE VERSUS?" he asked, summoning an ounce of swagger and setting his head contemplatively on his hand.

"Tried to book a mother-daughter holiday to Wam Bam, but Hammerlock's already gone. Took his contacts with him. Which left Pandora's Boxed Holidays, 'vacation packages worth opening'." She sank lower, extending her legs behind her and driving the toes of her boots into the boards. "Apparently I can't send you vault hunters anywhere without a fight, because soon as those two reached the office, the staff attacked them for some old bounty. Not even the jets survived." She planted her face in the counter. "Is it too much to want a family break somewhere with less explosions?"

"CAN'T TAKE ME ANYWHERE."

"No," she laughed, "guess not. How's Maya? She hasn't bothered messaging since she went offworld.”

Her name. A name he didn’t like hearing, because in this current skull-silence it’d reverberate and overstay its welcome. Maya, Maya, Maya. The inner voice thrummed in him somewhere but refused to speak. “LESS EXPLOSIONS,” he said.

She smiled sadly at him, his lowered enthusiasm obvious as the filter on his mask. “Has Ellie mentioned her project yet? She and some of the others started prodding at that spaceship idea people got in their heads after Sanctuary 2 went properly sky-high.” There was some hesitation, then she cupped her hand over as much of his as she could. “Might be more of us leaving soon. Forever, or as long as we can.” She kept his so-often unsteady gaze. “If we do, will you be okay to come too, sugar?”

He didn’t brush her off or look away. He couldn’t. His heart ran faster in his chest. Faster and faster. Approaching launch speed. Take off! Rejoin the galaxy. Every light in the sky was an old friend, glad to see him, three-plus years worried he was dead. Slam into any like a giant moth desperate for warmth, splatter against the glass, they would be so happy however little survived the landing. Clean the mess, staple it together, supervise the recovery. Bit of meat with a familiar face attached but that was what happened to people on Pandora. That was what you got. When he’d been sent there they’d expected this would be the result. Everyone would be relieved and kind and gentle and

_ No. We’re not going. _

“I WANT TO.”

_ Do you have any idea what we are? Did you listen? Ever? Seven feet of liability. A burden. Have you noticed no-one talks to us longer than they have to? These’re people who know us and how and why we’re damaged. Whole world’s worth of context and it doesn’t inspire the sympathy they’d need to stick around. Imagine we get out in the galaxy, acting like this, no-one knows the reason. Forget the bounty, forget the research value, forget the corporate reasons it’d be dangerous. Someone screaming and waving a saw like a big ol’ target. Pandora’s lonely as-is. Anywhere else could be a black hole for how many people’ll acknowledge us. No. We’re. Not. Going. _

“NOT TRUE.”

_ Does Moxxi ever ask for us? Axton? Gaige? Sal? Zer0? Maya? Has she sent us a single message since she left? Did she care? _

“SUNLIGHT IS THE BEST DISINFECTANT.”

_ Look at our ECHO device! Did she care?! If the brightest star in the universe couldn’t get us clean nothing’s going to do it, we’ll stay here until we finally, finally die, and stop dreaming there’s a cure. _

“STRIP THE FLESH, STAUNCH THE WOUND.”

_ Please. _

At last he broke eye contact with Moxxi, falling from his stool and into a heap on the floor, where he slammed his hands on the boards and growled as the inner voice drilled at the corner of his eyes, divining for tears. Maybe it should’ve kept out if it was going to make a scene. What a joke! Complaining he was the embarrassment when it was the part crying in a bar about their situation. 

_ I wanted to believe. That she’d fix this. She didn’t. Tried to leave but I can’t. We’re stuck together. Hoping there’ll be some other chance for us just pushes the knife deeper. It hurts. Admit we’re done and learn to live like this instead. _

He shook his head. “KEEP RUNNING!” He punched a crooked nail as hard as he could to show the inner voice what he thought of its attitude. Despite hitting the flat end the force punctured it through the skin. The gap between his knuckles bled. “WORLD’S RUN OUT? TAKE THE NEXT.” Land a few blows for emphasis. Every gap in his right hand, several of the fingers; wet and red. 

_ Stop. This is pointless. Stop. _

“CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP,” he said, wiping the back of his hand on the thigh of his pants, thinning the blood so he could see which joints were left for him to damage. Some sections of the thumb. Goody.

_ Why not? _

He hitched his elbow over his head and prepared to break his thumb on the nail.

_ You’re tired of this too. _

But he couldn’t do it.

_ Is this worth it? _

Not when Moxxi and her patrons were staring at him, silence thicker than it’d been for Axton and Gaige, horrified at what he was capable of doing to himself. Afraid to intervene. 

☄️☄️☄️

To her waist in soupy water, Maya barely noticed the vibration of her ECHO device. Unable to reach it in the moment she looked for the nearest embankment, slushed onto it, and used a pulse of energy to rid herself of the residual slime in and on her clothes. Clean, she reached for the now-silent device. Unknown number. As long as it wasn’t Lilith, she was game. She dialled. The ECHO tutted and clicked. Poor connection. She held it a little higher. That did the trick. 

A smooth dial-tone played until the other, unidentified party accepted the call. They chuckled. “How’s the swim, Siren? As nice as your usual waters?” Like the folks at the saloon, the caller had a remote accent, Rs rolling in surprising directions.

“If you’re out here watching,” she said, “would you mind sending some kind of boat? It’d make this a lot easier.” She hadn’t needed to drink the water for it to sober her. The difficulty and discomfort of the journey brought her to her senses. She didn’t like it. She wanted out of them, or out of the muck; whichever.

“People say you’re asking about vaults.” 

An actual conversation. Okay. She sat on the bank and set the device beside her. Unlacing her left boot, she tipped it upside-down, flushing it out. “You’re the person the bartender mentioned?”

There was a pause with a gentle plosive either side, as if they’d moved the ECHO device from one cheek to the other. “Yes,” they said. They tapped a metal object in the background — maybe a ladle against a pot. “Yes, I am. You’re from offworld.”

Of course. She flushed the right boot and put them both back on. They’d refill the second she went back in the water, but she was holding out hope for that boat. Lots of people had them in earlier section of the track. Pity everyone refused to lend them. “On a trip, yeah. Lots of planets on the itinerary. Originally I’m from —”

“Pandora.”

“No. Uh. Athen —”

“We’ve heard about you lot. Company-killers. Atlas. Hyperion. Worth a round at the saloon, any situation but this.” Were they going to attack her? They were probably going to attack her. Oh, for a trip that ended non-violently. 

She took the SMG from her hip and laid it across her lap at the ready, though she continued to fiddle with her clothes. Next she undid her belt and checked she hadn’t caught any plantlife in the clips and holsters. Anything came screaming out of the reeds she’d Phaselock it in place while she got dressed. “What kind of situation  _ is  _ this?”

“The kind where we’ve got leverage,” they said.

Huh. Okay. “And what’re you planning to lever out of me? Packed fairly light for the trip.”

“Get us some schematics from Helios and we’ll get you info on our vault.”

Funny. Helios was on Pandora, not here. Did they think she’d have them handy? Loot a bunch of tech patents in case she needed to look at them on the go? Though she did loot books… hm, maybe it was a reasonable assumption after all. “Afraid I didn’t bring any. Could I offer you a limited edition rifle instead?”

“No deal, Siren. Quiet bayou out here and we’re keen to keep it so. Pre-ordered some aquatic pest-deterrent robots. Lots of gators we’d love help with. Want those orders fulfilled, if they can be, and if they can’t we’ve got engineers who can use the designs.”

“It’d mean a trip to Pandora,” she said, not really expecting the protest to work.

“Take a week, take a month, take a year. Either you fetch them or they never arrive. Nothing lost from a wait. Everyone who knows it’s here wants to avoid attention on the vault anyway. Just that our pets’re getting eaten and we’re getting mighty depressed.” Despite their claim the caller remained totally inexpressive.

Maya lay herself flat (gross, damp ground) and let out a sigh (half because of the situation, half because she’d got more of her clothes wet). Pandora. Seven months since she’d left and she was already on a return trip. No question, she was going, Lilith would fry her if there was a chance at a vault and she ignored it. 

In her absence she’d discovered a lot about the galaxy, including the fact that no halfway-decent transport company bothered running that system; it’d be uncomfortable and they wouldn’t so much as give her a meal unless she paid extra. A bad ride from take-off to landing.

Then it’d get worse. People tried to kill her wherever she went but they were at least professional about it. Pandora was a lot of people with acid and sawed-off shotguns and rotary saws looking to commit the least sanitary murders possible. When she’d lived there she’d reasoned it was exciting but a few months of sharper, less rusty assassination attempts awoke her to what the world of vault hunting  _ could  _ be like if she had higher standards. Plus there were the sandstorms, the open slag pits, the sheer quantity of bandits.

The people in general. Some of whom she missed, others she’d been happy to leave behind. The day she lost any sleep over Tannis would be the day she came to on her operating table. Zed, Marcus, Vaughn, Claptrap; take ‘em or leave ‘em. 

She wanted to see Moxxi and Ellie but they’d mentioned they were spacebound so she figured they’d find her soon. Axton and Gaige had to go offworld eventually. Who knew with Sal? Could be worth it to see him.

… Krieg too.

Whenever she told herself not to worry about him and what he thought (or didn’t think) about her exit, her tattoos pulsed and her hair defied gravity to stand on end. He’d been as clear as he could be (not very) that he was afraid of attracting corporate attention, implied that if he went any further than the terminal he’d get kidnapped and their pilot’d get decapitated. Nothing to do with her. Plenty to explain why he’d chosen the option he chose. The silence was an accident. Right? Right??

Clarity. Visiting Pandora would offer some clarity on the situation. Whether he’d thought of her since she left the message or if he was some kind of giant, muscular goldfish. Did he know to make outbound calls or not. Etcetera.

“Ah, Siren?” Oh, shit, the caller. “Is that a ‘yes’?”

“Just a sec,” she said, putting the call on hold and scrolling way, way back through her contacts to find an inappropriately saucy portrait photo its subject had selected herself.

Accepting in less than three rings, Moxxi answered with an extended sigh, distorting the line. “Perfect timing, sugar. Too perfect.”

“Moxxi,” Maya said, “what’s — uh. What’s going on?” 

“Vault hunters. I didn’t realise how much corralling you and Zer0 did until you were gone.”

That was true, the pair of them had been glorified shepherds, leading the other four from destination to destination with a sword in place of a crook and a million Newtons of gravitational energy in place of a sheepdog. Nice that someone noticed. “Could get a fence to keep them out.”

“Hah. Too lucrative for that. How’s space, Maya honey, how’re you doing on your own?”

She sat up, damper than she’d been when she sat down (despite emptying her boots), and took a preparatory breath. “Did the Helios robotics department survive the fall? There’s someone here on Eden-6 wanting us to trade Hyperion tech for a vault location.”

Slow tutting, like a lawnmower failing to start. “Not sure on the  _ intimate  _ details but I think it’s near the central hall, the undamaged section. Stole some station schematics from Jack back when — they oughtta be in the storeroom, give me an hour or two and I’ll have a clear answer.”

“No rush,” Maya said, waving the ECHO device over her head in the hope her mystery caller would see she’d put them on hold for a reason. “Doesn’t seem like I’m welcome here without it, so I’ll be leaving the planet soon anyway.”

“If you’re sure you don’t mind. Lots of mess to clear before I can close — would’ve liked an excuse to step out, but Lady Luck should take responsibility for her domain.” There was a thoughtful pause, Moxxi tapping her nails on a bottle. “Will you contact the others, if you decide to visit?” The tapping grew louder, insistent. “Let them know where you’ve been?”

She couldn’t help but snort. “Sure, I’ll call them, if you really think they’re interested in the Peloponesia system or Epitoh or some other star-map they’ve done their own walk through.”

“Not for the places. You. They miss you, Maya.”

Yeah, people said that, until you brought out the holiday photos. “Don’t worry, I’ll get in touch,” she said. “Bye, Mox.”

Moxxi made a tentative kissing noise like a girl at prom with a fourth-choice date. “Tell you when I find the map.”

Their call disconnected, and Maya’s ECHO device dropped onto the mystery caller’s line. “Done with your gossip?” they asked.

“Yeah. Gotta get ready to go to Pandora.” Maya clipped it back on her belt and looked across the swamp. Fifty meters of water until the track restarted. Great. Empty-boot-by-empty-boot, she stepped toward the shore, begrudgingly ready to return the way she’d came. “That’s it? That’s the whole quest? Get a pool cleaner from Hyperion?” Oops, tempting fate. Her whole body cringed. “I’m really, you know, glad… that that’s the whole quest… generous demands…!”

“Hurry on if you know what’s good for you,” the caller replied, “Siren.”

Maya’s ECHO clicked out, and she hit the water, her pockets, pouches, and boots refilling within the same instant. This’d be quite a trek. At least she’d have someone to complain to at the other end. Provided she called. Provided they answered.

🔪🔪🔪

Next morning, on Moxxi’s floor, Krieg came to with broken fingernails (some missing) and a killer headache. Not the kind you’d get from the voice. The kind that ran from his nose and his mouth to his brain through every sense, fire in the hole, boom! Mine demolition. Rubble in the shafts. His pocket was a lot lighter.

Moxxi’d never managed to erect proper walls, but she’d installed shutters to keep people out 6-til’-noon. They were down; the bar was blissfully dark and he hadn’t overslept by much. With a wobble he was on his knees. He grasped ahead of him for assistance to his feet — bar stool, perfect — he straightened. The mask had stayed on through the night. Good. Confident no-one’d see him except perhaps Moxxi which was okay he took it off.

Air rushed in. He breathed the musty room in. A sharp pang of Truxican liquor came from the bar, relit the fuse in his sinuses, and reminded him of a conversation that’d ended with a full bottle of tequila in his hands. Someone’d listened to his original demands. Did a round of micless karaoke with the guy as thanks, belting out incorrect lyrics to songs he didn’t know he knew.  JUST A BLUNETTE GIRL LIVING IN HER LONELY WORLD SHE TOOK THE MEATFIGHT TRAIN GOING ANYWHERE!!  The patrons stared but none of them said a word. He’d earned a reputation! A currency he could use.

“Working hard to get our fill, everybody wants a thrill…” With the mask off he didn’t feel like he was fighting to be heard, he dropped his volume; a notch or two louder than most but less than eleven. 

Guiding himself around the bar to the water tap, he shoved his head underneath and drank it straight. Glasses were a whole pointless extra step. He drank it deep. He wiped his mouth with his bandaged hand, letting the gauze soak it up. Some of the headache-fire went out.

No longer overwhelmed by the searing pain, he saw some objects on the countertop that didn’t belong. His saw and ECHO device awaiting collection alongside a torn note.

He leaned over from the server-side and grabbed the note. It’d been written in lipstick and signed with a kiss. 

> ‘Krieg. Got a call from your Blue Tattoo. She’s on her way. - Moxxi’

Blustering to the forefront of their thoughts, the voice pounded at his already-soft frontal lobe until it was fully tenderised. It forced them in half over the bench and slammed a massive dose of adrenaline into them. Neither of them knew how to process.  _ Maya’s coming?  _ it asked.

He turned the information around in what remained of his head and tried to compose a reply. “Maya??” he groaned. Pow! Got it with a single shot. 

As if it heard him, the ECHO device lit up, screen going bright blue and the display cycling through call states — something inbound, a known number, find the contact name and picture — as it clarified who was calling the voice panicked and bumped into his guts wailing  _ you left it on voice control didn’t you, she wouldn’t bother ringing, hang up so we don’t seem desperate! _

He accepted it. “Hello, this is Moxxi’s, how do you like your pizza?”

“... hey,” Maya said. “Been a while, huh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3... Krieg makes hotcakes, and Maya copes with jetlag


	3. spacelag

They left her alone for a day after she landed, to reacclimatise and sleep through the spacelag. The days in the Eden system were a few hours longer than those on Pandora. The humidity dropped from the 90s to somewhere in the 0s. She stripped her clothes and lay in her underwear below a coarse sheet that hadn’t been washed in a month. This’d been normal a few months ago but now it wore at her like she was meat dressed in sandpaper in an oven. That in and of itself made her feel sick. The couple of bites of pizza she ate made it worse. Home! Home. If this wasn’t home Athenas was so; home.

When she felt well enough to leave the shack they’d supplied, she threw on a t-shirt and the pants she’d worn on the flight, then shuffled across the sand to Moxxi’s barefoot. Someone she’d met in the Epitoh spaceport claimed grounding yourself helped you get used to a planet. Magnetic charge. Or whatever. She didn’t feel any better, in fact her soles felt burnt, and the Eridium pulsing under the surface had never agreed with her like it did Lilith. This was not an enjoyable arrival.

She couldn’t let them know it. Not when Moxxi was being so accommodating. She unlocked the bar shutter with a key she’d been provided, rolled it up, and rolled it back down behind her. The air conditioning hit like a glass of milk after a curry. She took a stool and called into the depths of the building: “hey, I’m awake!”

Two sets of footsteps came from the cellar: light heels, and heavy boots. They ascended the stairs, wound through the storeroom, and into the bar proper. Moxxi, followed (unexpectedly-but-not-very) by Krieg. “Hi sugar,” she said, trying to ignore him as he failed to hide behind her top hat.

“MORNING SUNSHINE,” he said quietly.

“Sleep okay?”

Not particularly. But seeing him sent a current through her spine and into every nerve, running her straight from tired to rested to alert to anxious. Axton meeting her at the airport hadn't done that, neither had Salvador showing her around the quaint little shantytown. The force of the shock made it hard to get a read on whether it was the good kind of anxiety or not. If that even existed. 

He watched her fidgeting her hands, avoiding his eyes, and shrank back into the stairwell.

Now she definitely felt bad. "Time difference got to me, but not the worst. I can cope."

"No-one said you had to get out of bed yet."

"Please, I was raised at a monastery," she said, straightening her back, "I couldn’t sleep in if I tried.” At the monastery 9am would’ve been considered sinfully late. Most other places too. She wasn’t exactly an early bird.

"Well, I was raised in a bar, where anyone up before noon's owned breakfast." Moxxi turned and gestured Krieg out of his hiding place. "Put the pan on, we're making hotcakes.”

At last, something for him to do, something with fire and metal no less. He took a few clumsy, hurried steps around the corner into the kitchen. She could see him through a gap in the liquor shelves, slapping the dials and spinning the buttons ineffectually in their sockets. A jet of flames shot from the element — way too high — and he left it burning as he fumbled through the cupboard for the pan. 

Maya forced herself to ignore the ensuing clanks, sizzles, and splats as he located the hotcake ingredients and mixed them into the pan. Clearly he knew the basics of cooking but a fresh set of nerves were firing as she considered how it might go wrong in the following steps — would he lower the heat? Ever? She could hear something crisping through the divider. Hot cakes weren’t supposed to be that loud. Maybe the hot in the name had misled him —

Moxxi slammed a clear pint glass beside her. “Water. If I jumped from a swamp right into a desert, I’d need help acclimatising.”

She took it and drank, using the warped bottom of the glass to hide a glance at the stove. There was smoke. Oh no. “Thanks,” she gasped as she finished.

“Nothing by halves,” Moxxi said with a sly smile. “When’re you headed to Helios?” She leaned in an awkward position, bending herself in a sort-of U-shape so she could look between her two guests. “Taking support?” 

They’d had an ECHO conversation to that effect. Or, y’know. Maya’d interpreted it that way. She would bring Krieg along to fetch the schematics, since she hadn’t been in many gunfights over the intervening months. Or in his words: PRETTY LADY FRESH MEAT, CARCASS FOR CUTTING, MEAT MAN’LL PREPARE HER FOR THE BUTCHERY. Kinda condescending. She lowered her eyebrows and watched him flipping a blackened disc in the air. “Thought that was why he’d come by. We’ve agreed on it already, yeah, just not the details.”

Pulling the glass back her way Moxxi refilled it without leaving her position. “He never needs a reason. Seems to think I’m the best he’s got without you around.”

“Does he?” Maya asked. If he was making an effort with other people maybe it was okay that she’d left. “Cook hotcakes for you too?” She elbowed Moxxi’s shoulder over the bar, a bit of a reach.

“It’s a special occasion.”

“Hah.” Folding her arms in front of herself, she slumped into them. It wouldn’t have felt like it if he hadn’t put the pan on. Everyone so excited to see her, on this totally routine, honestly unremarkable trip. Like she was an adult playing peek-a-boo with a bunch of kids. Wow! Maya’s here! Where’d she come from? Was it that weird, someone leaving Pandora? Or was she the weird one, for not considering how the planet’d function without her?

Adventurers were supposed to have private views of sights no-one else could ever reach. If she only ever made it to that stuff with an entourage was she a real adventurer? She wanted to be left alone. She hadn’t achieved anything on her own. But she missed this. Them. Contradictory and hypocritical. Come on. Let her have her hotcakes and eat them too. 

If there was any fairness in the universe she would’ve been able to trade the attention to Krieg. Borderline uninvited houseguest burning down Moxxi’s kitchen.

Oh shit he was burning down the kitchen.

The pan had caught real fire and he was flipping the hotcake frantically, dangerously close to the (flammable) walls and (flammable) stock shelves and (extremely flammable) liquor supply, as he looked for somewhere to put it out. He paused and stood in place as he turned to each, as if he was so used to keeping things ablaze he needed to think hard about how to do the opposite. The mouthpiece of his mask emitted a constant, low _hhhhhhhhhhhhh_.

Confiscating Maya’s glass and running around the dividing wall, Moxxi dumped the water on the pan, leaving a brittle coal disc floating in the centre. Little flecks of black broke off and bobbed around it.

“FLAMBE,” he said as he stared into the hotcake soup. He pronounced it ‘flomb’.

“Hot,” she said, “not burnt. Allow me, sugar.” Gripping the small section of the handle where he wasn’t, she gave him a serious but non-judgemental look.

He released and went around to the bar. He kept his eyes low. Navigating to the customer side he left several seats’ worth of buffer between himself and Maya and sat down. “STOCK FROM THE BRITTLE CAKE CORPSE — PERFECT FOR YOUR NEXT RECIPE,” he whined at the kitchen.

“‘Fraid that’s not how it works.”

“STEEP IT IN THE BROTH AND SAVOR THE CARCINOGENS.”

“Appreciate you trying,” she said, “but there’s more charcoal in this than in most barbeques.” She spatula’d the blackened and waterlogged hotcake into the bin, tipped the ‘hotcake stock’ into the sink, and rinsed the pan. “I’ll take it from here.”

As Moxxi restarted the hotcake process on a lower flame, Maya and Krieg sat in silence at the bar.

He breathed so heavily she could hear it through his filter. Deep and tense and hitching, ready and eager to speak but unsure what to say. Not that the words he picked would be coherent. This was normal — disappearing inside himself to grapple with whether to be context-adjacent or totally off-topic. It was difficult to listen to because whatever came out wouldn’t make sense anyway. A lot of effort for a lot of nothing. “STRIP... THE FLESH.” Ah, an old favorite. “STAUNCH THE WOUND.” With a new twist. He shuddered and took his face in his hands.

There were two options with Krieg: you could listen to the words, or the meaning. Those were the options for most people, actually, but it was a clean split for him — he twitched and cried and bled like anybody, so his emotions were easy-to-read, his reasoning was the tricky part. Parsing it was an unpaid therapy session unto itself and whether it was worth the work varied. None of the others bothered. The fact they’d left the job undone in her absence frustrated her. “Get any better while I was gone?” she asked, though Moxxi’d implied most of the answer.

“WHAT’S BETTER THAN THIS? MEAT MAN BEING MEAT MAN.” He moved his fingers aside to show the open socket of his mask. His single eye stared out at her.

“Haha,” she laughed, interlocking and tensing her fingers. “Thought you’d kept working on the — would you call it a plan?”

“FLAN. BURNT. CONFISCATED BY SWEET HEARTS. YOU WERE THERE!”

“Not a _flan_ , Krieg, a _plan_ , something about how you had to heal if you were ever gonna —”

He clambered a seat closer and straddled it so he could face her front-on. Hands clamped on the edge of the bar stool and feet hitched up on a crossbar, he struck a pose like a frog about to leap. “GONNA WHAT? GONNA WHERE?”

What was she thinking? “Don’t worry. How about we figure out the mission?”

“ANYTHING YOU CAN DO, I CAN DO BETTER,” he sang, “I CAN DO ANYTHING BETTER THAN YOU.”

“Which is why you’re coming along, remember?” She smiled at him, hoping it’d calm him like it always used to.

He relaxed and returned to a normal sitting position but he didn’t drop his stare. “DON’T INVITE HIM.” He rolled his eyes and spun a finger next to his temple to mock some unseen, unspecified third-party. “DOESN’T LIKE PARTIES. WON’T GO WITHOUT THE PRETTY LADY, WON’T BE HER PLUS-ONE. FLIP THE PUNCH BOWL. DRINK THE PUDDLE. CRY.” He tried to spin the stool and, realising it wouldn’t move, leaned around in a circle to give a similar effect. “‘EMBARRASSING!’ I LOVE PARTIES. TAKE ME ANYWHERE.”

‘Take him anywhere’. Hah. Hadn’t had that attitude when he’d left — might’ve been different if he had. She’d spent a lot of energy arguing with Zer0 that he was worth taking along, only for him to waste it by refusing to come at the last minute. Didn’t call to apologise afterwards. Didn’t ever call, and Moxxi had the gall to say she was solely responsible for contacting him. There was supposed to be give-and-take. What if she was sad too? Missed him, too? “Anywhere but space, huh?” she asked, and immediately regretted it — pushing for a conversation he was doing his best to avoid, no, she needed it, and what about what she needed —

“AHAHAHAHAHA.” A laugh bitter as battery acid wound its way through his filter.

She laughed too, anxiously.

China clinked in the kitchen. A shamble of cutlery. The jitter of forks and spoons and little ramekins balanced on a dinner plate. Moxxi turned the corner holding two servings of hotcakes, maple syrup and cream on the sides. She set them in front of Krieg and Maya with a brief glance at each of them in turn. “Mine’re still cooking. Join you shortly.” Slowly, curiously, she returned to her post at the stove, keeping an ear tilted toward them.

Tipping the maple syrup on top of her three-stack, Maya tried her level best to ignore him. When they went to Helios there’d be plenty of action to distract them both from whatever this was, and Moxxi’d be around soon to defuse the current situation. She just had to survive another minute or two of thick, acrid tension. She poured the syrup until there wasn’t a dry surface left on her plate.

Krieg held his knife in his fist and stabbed the stack repeatedly, each blow making an awful _shunk_ as the metal reached the porcelain. Once he’d stabbed a dotted line around one of the edges he pinched the section, tore it off by hand, raised his mask, threw it in his mouth, and washed it down with the syrup.

The relative silence stuck, until Moxxi waded through it to take one of the seats between them. She ate her hotcakes like a normal person, cutting little slivers off and dabbing them in the cream. “How’s the food, sugar?” she asked after a few bites.

“Uh.” Maya swept her latest forkful through the syrup lake. “Moist.”

The sentence was punctuated by the loudest _SHUNK_ yet, as Krieg jabbed his knife straight into the countertop, lay the top stack flat across his hand in its stead, and ate it in a single bite. 

For the rest of breakfast he refused to say a word.

🔪🔪🔪

They’d leave at midday. Moxxi argued against it on basis of the desert heat, but he didn’t listen and Maya didn’t care. Ten minutes left. He sat on a rock overlooking the exit passage and kicked his feet. _This afternoon we’re not gonna make a scene_ . Breakfast wasn’t much of a scene, though, was it? He’d hadn’t even broken any plates. _We go to Helios. We get the schematics. We’re done._

He clenched the rock beneath him. “DON’T STOP BELIEVING.”

_Why’re you so obsessed with that song all of a — no, not getting derailed —_

“CHOO CHOO!”

_Promise that we won’t follow her any further._

“HYPOCRITE! WHO BOUGHT THE TICKETS?”

_People can change their minds. We do. A lot._ Since they got the call the voice wouldn’t shut up. Repetitive as the Promethea circle line, a train going around and around, unstoppable and unslowable and so so so boring. Pick a stop and get off!! He moved his hands to his thighs and clenched tighter, thumbs into his arteries.

_Hrrrgh._ Emergency brakes, stop, stop. _Wanted someone to talk to? There’re two of us now. Enjoy it while it lasts, because when she’s gone, I’m out too._

What? No — power the third rail, coal the caboose — this hadn’t been mentioned to him. “IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO. HOW WOULD I KEEP DANCING?” 

_I’m tired._

He released his grip and folded his arms and legs tight. “NOT FAIR.” They didn’t like each other, but his mind felt wrong without the voice. If they were two halves of a whole — which was how the doctoral-types in the Raiders thought of them — the Little Man was half-full and Big Guy was, regrettably, half-empty. It had history and knowledge and could release the beast Hyperion had stashed inside them. He had incredible reflexes, a great chilli recipe, and a beautiful baritone. There’d be a lot missing from him without it. “HOLD ONTO THAT FEELING!!”

_Enough._

The sun cast a long shadow behind them, over the pond and part of the shantytown. Despite Moxxi’s concerns, the wind today was strong enough to keep them cool — for Pandora, at least, his nerves flickering with the memory of chillier and damper climates in the other arms of the galaxy. He closed his good eye and let the weather run across his exposed skin. A sensation they’d both enjoy.

Sure as the edge of a beach the finer muscle groups the inner voice controlled came loose. The back of his neck untensed. The traps. All sorts of pieces he doubted even Brick knew the names for. Relaxed — or resigned, whichever — the voice wasn’t as harsh when it spoke: _if you’d cooperated when we were saving the planet, tried to be a team player, we wouldn’t be so lonely._

Plenty of reasons! Like, errr. “EVERYONE IN THE GALAXY SPEAKS AXE,” he said defensively. “CLEAR COMMUNICATION.”

_Oh, yeah, Eden-5’ll throw a degree at you with the communications mastery you’ve shown._

“TRIPLE WORD SCORE! DO THEY LOVE US YET?”

_If we could talk to her we could convince her to stay._

Huh. “HOW SO?”

_Let me take over —_

He stood and howled into the wind, the sound dissipating before it could travel. “NO!! CAN’T TALK TO A GUN. PLANET ARMED TO EIGHT BILLION TEETH.” The voice was startled silent. This was a problem, in the middle of a conversation, so he sat back down. “HOW SO??”

A contemplative gap in their patter. _You love the slots. Pretty lights and sounds. What if we do some gambling? Convince Maya to stay, and I’ll stick this out. Otherwise it's not worth it._

Convince Maya to — yeah, yeah yeah yeah, he could do that, give her flowers and take her to Wam Bam or the Southern Shelf to get that otherworldly feeling without stepping from Pandora Firma. It'd be easy! Lots of ladies liked him. "I'M FASCINATING."

The voice's laugh was warmer than his, called to mind a teacher at — there'd been a teacher — who sounded like that when he was about to correct a mistake. _Maya isn't Tannis or Tina. She doesn't care about what happened to us or our blood test results. To win her over you'd need to open your mouth and talk some sense. Like her books._ There was an undertone there, sly and self-satisfied; it was winning the argument. He'd have to hit it later and show it who's boss.

"PRETEND TO BE A NERD, WIN HER OVER."

_Yeah._

"COMPLETE SENTENCES ARE FOR NERDS."

_Yes._

“ENOUGH SENTENCE FOR YOU?”

_Yes!!_

"THEN LET'S DRIVE," he yelled, "SHOTGUN!"

In a single bound, he launched himself from the rock into the pond below, landing to his knees in water and splashing the remainder of the warmth out of his body. 'Heatstroke'? Not likely. He let out a roar. The Raiders in the vicinity spun to look. That made him cackle.

Behind him, in the settlement’s makeshift clocktower, a set of polyphonic bells dinged 12.

Stomp-wading out of the puddle he proceeded to the gates, unhitching the axe from his back-holster as he went, whistling the tune he’d had crammed in his head since karaoke. As he reached the bot-and-block barricade between The Backburner and the desert he swayed in place — alert like he hadn’t been in months. Prove the voice wrong, be the best, earn Maya, save the day. Seize the day. Carpe diem. Carpe jugulum? Go for the jugular. “THREE OF US TOGETHER, PEAS IN A POD, GRAB YOU AND HOLD YOU TIGHT.”

_Don’t get too excited. Might scare her._ It acted stoic but it shared his heart and he knew there was blood coursing through their shared veins like a flooded river. Too afraid to admit how it really felt! Bit his tongue so often whenever he tried to tell the Pretty Lady how they loved her. Coward. Liar. _Remember, the idea is to give her a reason not to leave._

“FEAR IS PERSUASIVE,” he said, staring at his axe and the blood crusted along the blade. 

_Romantic-persuasive, idiot. Or pitiful-persuasive if we can’t swing it. Pretend you’re — holy shit here she comes._

The only good part of living on Pandora was the weather. The planet’s orbit kept most of the landmasses from having true seasons, which was why it was so hard to grow a goddamn vegetable, but also how the equatorial areas got their allure. Anywhere with sun had sun for almost a full year — hotter and brighter each day until a brief solstice where the sands snowed in and the light flickered out. 

This was among the brightest weeks and it couldn’t outshine Maya as she strode over the dunes toward them, hair twisting around her face in the wind. Not the avatar of fire or of lightning but blinding, numbing the same. Dressed in yellow, Maliwan kit holstered at her sides, bare-faced and seared across the nose and cheeks from the day’s intensity. She chose her steps carefully as she continued to adjust to the terrain. When she was confident she wouldn’t trip on a rock or an unstable clump of sand, she glanced up to check whether he was waiting. She smiled. She hadn’t offered him a real smile since returning, just the conciliatory kind they both saw through.

His heart surged, burst its banks, the voice swept away in the tide. Hadn’t known this feeling since they’d saved the world. She was like saving the world to him. Could she possibly understand? Screaming it at her hadn’t been the right approach. What to do, what to say, what to try?

“Should we get going?” she asked as she reached him.

“WHERE —” what’s a word that works what’s a word that works what’s a word that works “ — TO?”

That cute head-tilt she did when she wasn’t sure whether he was responsive or just appropriate-by-accident. So cute. Could eat her. Wouldn’t eat her — could doesn’t mean would — don’t hurt him for that.

Another smile with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Lottery winner against the odds. Surprise party for a neglected friend. Person offered a gift they thought might be a trick. “Helios was, uh, where I thought we agreed on.” She chuckled, a self-defensive chuckle; he understood different laughs. “How about there?”

“HELIOS,” he repeated because repeating what she’d said was safe and easy.

“Yeah.” She looked him over. “Let’s get the car. I’ll drive.” Passed him by, into the tunnel, toward the Catch-a-Ride.

He matched her pace as he followed, allowing a few meters gap between them and trying his level best to appear normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4: Krieg and Maya learn to hate keycards


	4. to the top

Years on, plucked from the sky and left to rust, Helios space station was still an overwhelming sight. It couldn’t hurt them anymore. Laid across the landscape like a coma patient (maybe a touch jaundiced, with its yellow exterior) unable to wake or die. 

Krieg and Maya sat in their technical parked up on a nearby hilltop, her at the wheel and him in the turret, both sloughed half out of their seats to get the best respective view of their afternoon’s entertainment. Wherever R&D was it couldn’t be seen from outside, wasn’t any of the sections with cracked plating. Probably near the bar of the ‘H’, the centre of the complex, as was appropriate for any functional tech company. They’d have to get to the lifts and pray the relevant shafts were intact. That’d be the worst part of the job.

At least, she hoped it’d be. She swung her legs over and through the window, clambering out that way rather than opening the door. Not a common move on the other planets she’d been to lately. Smart to get that sort of kick while she could. “Any idea whether the lifts’re operational?”

He took a series of shaky breaths as he descended from the turret. Ever since they’d left The Backburner he’d been operating on a delay, reacting rather than acting. “DON’T —” Especially when he spoke. “ — LIKE —” His sentences had been sliced apart. “ — IT HERE.” When the jigsawed pieces came together, though, they made a baffling amount of sense.

“HAVEN’T BEEN BACK.”

She walked around the car to meet him. The gap between where they’d stopped and the wreckage was littered with too many debris to drive closer. At least they’d have shelter under the larger sheets of metal. Her nose felt close to blistering. Should’ve brought sunscreen with her. No, the locals would’ve teased her for it. What kind of self-respecting Pandoran would worry about skin damage? Unless it got to third-degree it’d be fine. Though it made her a tad jealous of Krieg’s mask, and set her closer to understanding why so many people here wore them. “Didn’t expect you to,” she said, “but I figured I should ask.”

This was weird. The whole situation was weird. Visiting Helios with Krieg focused in a way he hadn’t been since — well, it made it feel more significant than a quick errand. They were here for a pool cleaner! How many grim portents was a pool cleaner worth? Four? Five? If it got too portentous, she was out: Lilith could get info on the Eden-6 Vault from someone else. Maybe Hammerlock. Wasn’t he from there?

Without further ado she dashed to the edge of the sand hill and — no stopping, no pausing — hopped over and down the slope, skidding and stumbling, almost falling, letting the incline set her pace. The wind rushed against her. Her fringe blinded her. She laughed despite herself. This was what she’d liked about Pandora! The desert playground. She’d spent three years here because it was _fun_. Pure, stupid, unregulated. 

She tripped on a half-buried boulder at the bottom and would’ve fallen on her face if her tattoos hadn’t caught her, instinctively locking her mid-air and keeping her in place until she figured out the safest place to move her legs.

“YES!” A rumbling noise — _thud-a-thud-a-thud-a_ — travelled down the hill toward and past her. Krieg came to a stop on the ground nearby. He’d rolled. Cuts and scrapes marked his arms and pants where his spare saw blades had snagged on him. Onto his feet, he unclipped the right side of his mask and emptied out the sand that’d snuck in.

They looked at each other — she straightened out and regained her balance, he reclipped his mask and adjusted it against his face.

“... race you to the entrance?” she asked.

“EAT DUST,” he replied.

Counting on her fingers — 3, 2, 1 — she punched the air with her other hand, and they were off, her athleticism against his long, long legs, the remaining mile to their destination. It being weird didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it. That was how this world went: bigger risks and bigger rewards hand-in-hand.

🔪🔪🔪

Some of the docking bay structures had broken in the intervening months, stripped for useful components by the Rats, leaving gaps where critical joinery had been. The ceiling panels and strip lights were either dangling by a single screw or already cracked on the floor. 

Together they waded through the glass and past the larger fallen fixtures in search of a functional elevator. Maya’s SMG was warm on her hip. Krieg’s current blade was somehow duller than it’d been. 

_Ever gonna clean that?_

He rolled his shoulder but refused to answer. Replying to the voice would let Maya know it was there. If she knew it was there she might try to talk to it, past him, ignore that he could do words too. Earlier when he said ‘eat dust’ she’d known what he meant even though eating dust wasn’t what people did! So far, so good. He rapped his knuckles on the side of his head in lieu of a verbal reply.

“That one’s got lights.” She grabbed his shoulder and stopped him next to her so they could survey it together. Historically she hadn’t needed force or an explanation to get him to listen, so she didn’t use either here; no digging her nails in or tensing her arm, just a soft palm on his bicep. With her other hand she pointed around the vicinity of the elevator.

The Rats that’d disconnected so much of the framework of the former space station were at work on their newest project: salvaging the elevator’s call mechanism and some of the attached cables. What they planned to attach it to was beyond even his wildest imagination — but they were so gentle, so cautious — no doubt they had a use for it elsewhere. Three of them prodded their spindly fingers into the casing and pried at it with their sharp nails.

Unfortunately, he and Maya needed it where it was. He clapped his hand against the axe on his back, then against the shotgun on his hip — which should he use?

She pointed at the axe as she drew her SMG. “Let’s surprise them,” she whispered, crouching behind an abandoned shipment of oxygen canisters. Comfortable in place she pointed her middle and forefinger at the Rats; a wonky attempt at a military gesture.

 _Hah. She tried._ The voice had its fun, as it did whenever it thought about life Before Him, then allowed them to focus on their new, murine mission. 

Creeping out of cover they kept low as they approached the Rats. Curled over to less than half their standing height. They held the axe in their right hand and used their left to make sure they didn’t trip on any loud objects. Depth perception gone when Sammy took their eye; reliant on touch. The metal gone cold in the accidental basement. The brittle surface of cheap Digistructed shipping crates. The prickle of safety glass scattered across the ground. They loped like a wounded creature on three limbs though they hadn’t been hurt yet. Pretty Lady was there. They wouldn’t get hurt. They could trust her.

If they weren’t wearing the mask the rearmost Rat would’ve felt their breath on its neck. The mask had so many purposes. Meant the people they did this to didn’t know who’d done it. Kept friends from seeing the smile when they did. Different to their old approach but same result. Dead, dead, dead. _Yes._ Raise the axe. _Quick!_ Rats can’t feel the breath, but they can hear the breath! Swing, swing, swing!

Turning with its goggles round and shining like startled eyes the Rat blocked Krieg on instinct, raising the bayonet on its rifle to parry the inactive saw blade.

Its friends turned a moment later and took out their knives.

As the left Rat tried to strike it was sucked into the air and locked in an orb of purple energy. Maya stood from behind the ten-pin formation of oxygen tanks and aimed her weapon. “Maybe we don’t stealth,” she said, and pulled the trigger. It whirred — and an incendiary round blistered from the barrel.

The Phaselocked Rat let out wet, sickly whine like a saliva-coated balloon leaking air. The flames caught. The whine intensified. As the Phaselock dropped, it fell to the floor, compressed and roasted — victim of the pressure cooker combo. 

_Popcorn, huh?_

Taking advantage of Krieg’s awe, the rifle-Rat retrieved its weapon from the parry and made an offensive thrust with the bayonet. 

They stepped aside but the blade caught their hip and pierced through clothing to the skin to the bone. Deep wound. Not a lot of blood flow there. Wouldn’t do any major damage if they ignored it. Retaliate, don’t worry, strike while the Rat’s close. “HEY BATTER BATTER, HEY BATTER BATTER, SWING!”

A generous sweep of Krieg’s arm took the Rat’s head from its shoulders.

Nestled among the heap of mushy, unpleasant sounds was the frantic muttering of the leftover Rat as it tried to collect its ally’s gun from the ground. It repeated its consonants like a mantra though none of them combined into recognisable words. It took the rifle by the stock and hefted it into position on its shoulder. 

Maya leapt over the canisters and slid along the ground under the Rat’s aim. She came to a stop beneath its extended arm. “Axe!” she demanded and reached toward Krieg.

They tossed it into her ready hand.

Using both arms to ensure enough force, she swung it through the Rat’s elbow, severed its forearm, drenching her in slightly-too-viscous Rat blood and a few instinctively-fired cartridge cases. 

The Rat let out a screech like its allies had.

While it was still preoccupied with its missing arm, Krieg snatched its leg. “HOME RUN.” Hoisting the Rat in the air they picked a trajectory and hurled it as far as they could — much further than a human should throw, much further than a human should fly. They shielded their eye as it arced past a massive floodlamp on the opposite end of the docking bay. The last they saw, it descended toward a stack of combustible fuels.

An explosion shook another set of panels from the ceiling.

“NO-DOUBTER!” They stuck their fists in the air and laughed, and as they held them there, felt themself unzip, teeth parting, gasping, there he was, there it was, separate, pulse lower and slower, blood temperature and tempo steady. He dropped from the pose and dangled his arms at his sides. Sympatico, sympatic-over. _Safe_. “SAFE.”

Combat left an afterglow. The pair of them’d be happy together for at least a few minutes. The length of an elevator ride? Perhaps he could get to R&D without having to answer any of its stupid questions about what he’d do when he arrived or if he intended to clean himself up. He meandered on without a second glance at the damaged mechanism and took hold of the control lever, though he didn’t pull it yet. Join him, Pretty Lady?

She was less confident in the machinery. Taking the Rats’ original position and inspecting the scratches on the control box, she raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t seem too bad,” she said, “but I’m not totally sure.”

“GOT YOU,” he said. He extended a hand and gave a hesitant thumbs-up.

“I’ve got myself.” She strolled to his side. “Siren powers. Make it difficult to fall anywhere too fast. I’m not sure I can hold your weight, that’s the trouble.” 

There was her hand on his bicep again — an emotional gesture, not like that functional ‘halt’, a friendly show of encouragement. Perhaps not friendly, perhaps the other type? She didn’t care about sex (she’d told him so when they learned about Moxxi and Jack) and he could live without it (he’d told her as best he could). That seemed to limit the possible range of flirtatious gestures to hand-touches and head-touches. Increased frequency of both after The Warrior, decreased frequency since Sanctuary fell. They never seemed essential to her like they did to him. Passing fancy from a fancy woman. Yet he could obsess over them and their potential like nothing else. So what if she didn’t mean it with the intensity or the consistency he did — that didn’t mean they meant nothing.

She retracted, gradually; there was still affection in her smile, but they had a job to finish. Shifting her stance she returned his axe and gripped the lever in its stead. “If this breaks — ehh. Don’t die, I guess?” Pulling against stiff gears, she flipped it forward with him.

Around them the edges of the platform folded in to form safety barriers. The pulleys graunched below as the elevator forced itself upward, into the shaft above. A few seconds of exhausted, heaving effort lead into a smoother hiss of exertion. It would support them for this trip, at least. 

Hyperion yellow lights striped across the walls of the shaft. This was for freight, not for passengers — it didn't need steady lighting. The beams swept across Maya emphasizing different parts of her depending on the moment he looked. She was placid now the ride had smoothed out. 

He released the lever and walked an impatient circle around the platform. "RARE… AND… DELICIOUS," he growled, contemplating their destination.

"Research and development," she said. "Where they make new stuff to sell. Mostly guns, since it's Hyperion, but probably bots and medical equipment too. And —"

"MONSTERS." He used his finger to spin the axe blade, around and around, its pattern hypnotic neon. The scars below his mask were a similar shade of purple. It wasn’t a nice glow like the blade. Or like her tattoos, even though they were Eridian too. His neon was a luminol highlight on the crime that’d been done to his meats; his skin meats, his tendon meats, his brain meats too. Blood spilled. Impossible to unspill. Which was why he laughed when the voice tried.

She nodded. "Yeah. Those. Probably not at this location, I figured that was just the Highlands — didn't see anything when we visited with Tina.” With some hesitation, she let go of the lever too. She watched it for a second after in case it went skew and dropped them back to the bottom. Satisfied, she gave him her attention. “If I’m wrong —” She trailed. Not sure what she’d do if she was wrong. False confidence.

He didn’t need it. “BAD PLACES EVERYWHERE.”

“Less since we got rid of —”

“NO!” He was firm, “GOOD PEOPLE — BAD PLACES — EQUAL WEIGHT.”

“Hm.” She leaned back and — ironically — almost tripped on the safety barrier. Rebalancing herself she nodded at him. “We got this?”

“CRUSH IT IN OUR HANDS!” 

The elevator wobbled from the inertia as it reached the top of the shaft. Flattening out at the sides it gave an inviting _ding._ They’d arrived at — huh! Accounting. From the hat Tina’d given him. Number city. 

He strode past the department’s reception desk and toward an open set of double-doors, inviting him into a vast room full of tables and unconnected monitors. The walls of the room were lined with lockers studded with a mix of red and green lights, and massive fans hung dormant overhead like bats at daytime.

“Why’d accounting need a freight elevator?” Maya asked from the platform. 

There was a clunk beneath her and an unexpected _whirr_ from the motors. 

Startled, she leapt clear onto the reception floor, and checked wide-eyed over her shoulder to see what’d caused the noise.

The platform sat innocently level with the floor. 

Without breaking eye contact she paced after Krieg. “There’s probably some other lift for the upper levels.” She brandished her arm in another mock-military gesture, indicating for him to lead ahead. “Onward!” 

Axe tight in his grip he bounded ahead through the desk-rows, loose sheets of paper scattering and scattering dust with them, a burst of life somewhere that hadn’t had it even when Helios was a functional big-bang bright-spark corporate hub. “UPWARD!” 

_Doing pretty okay so far, I gotta admit._

_What Maya said, though…_

_Pandora’s not the only bad place in the universe._

☄️☄️☄️

Helios hadn’t been designed with accessibility in mind. The stratification of Hyperion as a company meant the station was likewise stratified into distinct layers for each type of clearance, each section of the ‘H’ requiring its own keycard — or three, or six.

The optimism they’d carried onto the first lift was gone by lift four, replaced by a deep weariness. The directional signage was all broken or disconnected from the mains and they were forced to rely on the painted labels on the departments’ doorsteps. Test the card on lifts and passages until something worked, walk to the nearest functional sign, and if it didn’t say R&D, double back to try another or find another keycard.

Of course none of them had said R&D.

Exhausted by repeated failure (that and — if she was honest — the distance they’d walked in the last few hours) Maya forced them to stop at the cafe outside of Wholesale. There wasn’t any food or coffee left inside but there were chairs, so many chairs. She threw herself into the plushest and put her feet on the table. “What if it’s, uh…” She crossed her arms over her head and twisted her hips to either side until her back let out a stiff _crack_. “Not in the building? Could’ve been kept at a separate location to avoid theft and poaching.”

Krieg didn’t bother with a chair, dropping himself on the floor and crossing his legs. “BOIL THE EGGHEADS.”

“No,” she said, “it’s when you hire someone from a competitor.”

“SELLOUT!”

“A lot of people get mad at it, yeah.” She stared at the empty cabinet, eyes glazing like the donuts that’d once occupied its shelves. “Someone leaving just to do the same work somewhere else.” Like protecting a planet in the next galaxy over. Or hunting for Vaults on a world that might not have any. There were none recorded on Eden-6 — this whole trip could be a wild saurian chase — but maybe naively, she wanted to trust her informant.

Or maybe it was an excuse to come calling when she was overdue for it. She’d gone offworld so worried that he was angry at her decision that she’d been reluctant to check in. A month passed, then two, then three — suddenly it’d been too long. Yes, she needed that excuse. Someone else to invent a reason to ring after almost half a year. The informant had absolutely no credibility but they’d had a reason. She took it without any of the neuroses that normally went into her decision-making. 

Pandora sucked and was terrible but deep inside she still wanted to be here. Probably would, in some mixed-up part of her like her intestines or whatever, until everyone she loved left too. Yeah; she loved these people. She loved Moxxi, she loved Ellie, she even maybe loved Marcus when he wasn’t betraying them to whatever the hot new dollar on the market was. She hadn’t thought she’d loved Scooter until he died and she felt a stronger pang than expected. Brick and Mordecai and Lilith (Lilith!) and Tina and Tannis (Tannis?). 

The trouble was that historically when she’d left the people who loved her they’d used it as an excuse to try and kill her. The Brothers sent assassins, and they were meant to be pacifists. How was she supposed to know that the Raiders wouldn’t do the same?

There was movement in her periphery. Krieg dropped his axe and followed her line of sight — vaulting chairs and tables — to the cabinet and the dusty counter. He stepped clear over it and inspected it from the other side. Punched the register to eject the drawer: _ding!_ Empty. Slid the trays out of the cabinet in case there were secret, forbidden breads: _shunk!_ Empty. Spun the walk-in freezer door open: _THUD!_

Not empty. “ICED COFFEE?” He bent and grabbed something. Standing straight, he held the frozen body of the barista by the scruff of their neck. 

Maya made a pained face.

With a shrug, Krieg dragged the corpse aside so he could access the rest of the freezer. “ICED COFFEE!” 

How many dead baristas had they clown car’d into there? Was that part of the Helios evacuation plan? ‘In the event of station shutdown, cram into the freezer to preserve your body for your next of kin’? Actually… knowing Jack…

But no! He walked out with a hemp sack of beans and shook it at her with a proud look in his eye. “GRIND INTO FAST-HEART JUICE?” Actual coffee! If they hadn’t cut power to the freezer, it was probably still fresh enough to use. 

“Can you work the machine?” she asked.

He had a think. “THE BEAN,” he thought aloud, “THE BEAN IN THE MACHINE. MACHINE BEAN. BEAN BLOOD IN BONE CHINA. DRINK BLOOD, LIVE FOREVER.” He slammed the sack on the ground, freeing his arms so he could strike a pose, fists clenched and eye wide. “LIVE FOREVER!!”

She rolled from her chair, landed in a crouch, and sauntered over to and over the counter to stand beside him. “Not inspiring a lot of confidence, big guy.” Shit, there _were_ more baristas in the freezer. When they were done they’d have to put the first one back with the rest. Someone would find them and give them a proper burial, someday, if they were lucky. 

Taking hold of the machine, she checked it for water and — power. Hmm. It was plugged into the socket, and the socket was on, but whatever switches she flicked nothing happened. Run the freezer, the lifts, the lights, but not the signs or the small appliances. Some kind of emergency mode — of course. Wouldn’t be able to swap to standard power unless they found the control room, and that was probably several levels of clearance higher than any of the cards they’d find lying around. That meant no real rest stops until they returned to the Backburner. Fine! She’d survive. “Put the body back in the ice box,” she sighed, “let’s keep moving.”

But Krieg didn’t move. He stood in place, breathing. 

“Or should I —?”

Whipping the unused rifle from his back, he slammed it on the counter — wobbling the glass — and ran a finger along the components. Not the barrel, not the handle, not the sights! His finger stopped on an attachment near the hammer: a black cube with a little blue lightning bolt on it. Digging his nails under the edge, he broke the cube from the side of the gun, and put it face-down on the countertop. Lifting the cube like a magician showing a trick, he revealed a tiny battery with plug-and-play universal ports. “ARE YOU SHOCKED?” he asked, slyly lifting it on his palm.

She was _stunned_. “Can it run the machine ‘til it’s heated?”

“CONDUCT AN EXPERIMENT!” Two puns in as many sentences. Awful.

Together, they unplugged the machine from the wall, and cut the original jack off the end of the cord so they could wire it directly to the battery. A few tiny Phaselocks instead of a soldering iron and they had it connected. Numbers and pressure gauges returned to the face of the machine. Heat rising inside, tick tick tick, at least fifteen minutes until it was ready. Krieg kept quiet, and Maya kept focused on the locks. This didn’t take the same concentration as a fight did, but she wasn’t the Shift Siren, and wiring didn’t come naturally.

When it was ready, he filled the machine with the ingredients, turned what needed turning, and set its settings like it was speaking the same skew language as him. He made two cups of espresso. The milk wouldn’t have kept like the beans had.

Before they took their seats, he even did the courtesy of putting the barista back where he’d found them, and resealing their icy tomb. 

At the table they’d picked earlier, they sat across from each other and politely clinked their cups together. Maya held hers aloft a second longer than he did. A few dots of sweat marked her forehead. “Never thought I’d visit a cafe with you,” she said. It wasn’t that kind of planet, they’d made sure of it. “Didn’t seem like your, ah, cup of tea.”

She thought her pun was worth a laugh, or at least a groan, but he lifted his mask and stared in the other direction. He held his cup gently between his hands.

“What’s up?” She leaned sideways but couldn’t get a clear view of his expression.

He tilted his face to show the unscarred side. “Other drinks on the menu,” he said, frowning. His features were heavier than Axton’s, his remaining eye pale and unfocused — dilated pupil set in a light grey iris — but there was an appealing sharpness around the edges. Well-cut jawline, high cheekbones, and dark, tapered eyebrows. ‘Handsome’ was a loaded word even without Jack entering the equation and she didn’t like to use it, so she wouldn’t, however much he might’ve deserved it.

“I know, I just —” Agggh, she’d put her foot wrong somewhere, and she didn’t want to ruin their break by pushing him to explain. “It’s nice that we got the chance.” She sipped her cup to stop herself saying anything else. The coffee was stale and she would’ve preferred it with sugar and milk; yet, given the circumstances, it was fine.

He drank his in steady gulps. Didn’t turn any further. Kept the scars hidden. Was so mannered, he could’ve been a different person. There was a furrow in his brow, and between gulps, he’d flick or scratch himself on the hidden side of his face, scowling deeper. The image came together like a Pre-Corporate photograph; the subject posed as deliberately as possible so as not to waste precious film bringing disrepute to his family. Soon the cup was empty, but he stayed on in that stance, reluctant to ruin this rare picture of him at peace.

She drank hers slowly and held it once she was done for the same reason. 

… Though there weren’t any windows in the cafe, she could tell the sun would be getting low, and they had to find either R&D or a residential block as soon as possible. Any robots still on their cleaning routine might find them if they stayed in a thoroughfare come night. She’d fought enough Loaders for a lifetime. 

“Come on,” she said, extending a hand to him, “we can’t stay here forever.”

He flinched. His eye widened. A call to war. 

Rather than accept, he put his cup down, adjusted his mask over his face again, and hi-fived her, slapping away whatever melancholy the moment had left. “ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH,” he said. He took the axe from the floor where it’d lain for so long.

They left the cups on the table as they exited the cafe for a second loop of Wholesale.

🔪🔪🔪

R&D wasn’t real. Hyperion pulled its gun designs out of its ass, or probably, Butt Stallion’s. No-one in this building had drawn a schematic in their life and their half-decomposed bodies were likelier to do it now than when they were breathing and had a full set of muscles. 

Outside, darkness had fallen, and the whirr of bots on eternal night shift grew louder every minute. They’d reached the upper floors with actual windows but it hadn’t helped with navigation. Lost, tired, and sure a fight would worsen both, Maya directed them to find somewhere to rest.

Yet the best option they’d located in half an hour of searching was — “STAIRS MAN HAD STAIRS TO PRACTICE ON. DIDN’T HELP! SPLAT.”

“Professor Nakayama, huh?” She cocked her hip and folded her arms, crackling with that exhausted amusement only found in situations where setbacks are so common they’re funny. 

“LIE ON THE LAB SLAB?” Krieg pointed across Nakayama’s multi-level office at an MRI scanner probably bought on the Professor’s Jack clone budget. “FREE RADIATION WITH EVERY REST.” Radiation and slag could be quite compatible, his excitement wasn’t as ironic as it might’ve been. 

_Don’t tell me. You’re doing an ‘only one MRI scanner so we have to share’ gambit? That’s creepy._

He hung his arm around the back of his neck bashfully, and then dug his nails in to teach the voice a lesson. 

_Ow._

No, even he knew when to be a gentleman and take the floor. Or the desk! Nakayama had a lovely broad desk with only a single, tasteful Jack photo in the corner. _Pow!_ He punched the photo onto the floor. Goodbye, tiny promotional photoshoot Jack; have fun in tiny promotional photoshoot Hell. 

“If he’s here we’ve made it to senior leadership,” she said, leaning against the desk with him, “which means we should be near their quarters and our clearance should unlock them. I say we figure out where the actual beds are.”

“WOULD’VE TINGLED.” He couldn’t hide the sadness in his voice. “BATH BOMB BUT THE BOMB IS THE AIR. SENSORY EXPLOSION! SLIGHTLY WORSE THAN A REGULAR EXPLOSION! STILL AN EXPLOSION!”

“Didn’t realise I’d brought Torgue along.” She walked toward the automated door, gesturing for him. “There was a corridor on the left.” Pressed on so fast, the door closed behind her before he could reach it, a startling pneumatic _hiss_ just in front of his nose.

He waved it apart and pursued into a corridor where the emergency lights were sparser and the impending Loader noises impended encouragingly less. Maya’s tattoos glowed in the relative dark and proved a valuable guide. The corridor curved as it went but following her he managed to avoid any embarrassing collisions. Where would it spit them out? Perhaps the waste disposal, or a breakroom, or security? Possibilities! The panelling on the walls staggered from searing yellow to a pleasant off-white. The floor turned from plain stone to polished marble. Somewhere fancy? The lights were brighter, the corridor opening —

In front of them stretched a grand hall with twenty doors across two levels. A great glass staircase at the opposite end lead to a mezzanine with a matching bar, and access to the upper floor. Beneath the bar, on the ground, was a private gym littered with dusty equipment; treadmills, cycles, ellipticals. In the center of the hall was an artfully uneven set of fixed sofas, upholstered in a mustard linen several shades more tasteful than Hyperion brand guidelines were supposed to allow. Despite the scarce power in the rest of the station someone had decided the hall’s calming muzak ought to play through the emergency, a graceful violin piece in the key of Titanic.

“Oh,” Maya said, “huh,” she continued, “wow.” She stopped in front of him and he walked into her back. She didn’t budge. Reaching behind her she raised her hand to his shoulder as a belated doorstop.

“APARTMENTS?” He stepped around her and further into the hall. “COMPLEX.” There wasn’t a surface in the room that’d gone un-architected. Upper management lived here — or maybe the execs — or maybe the board. Each of the doors had an engraved nameplate next to the handle. He approached the nearest on the left and stooped to read it. _Prof. Nakayama._ Upper management.

He tested the handle but — per the red light on the plate — it wouldn’t budge on its own. “ROOMS FOR RENT! IF WE REND THEM OPEN,” he called over his shoulder to Maya. Taking his axe out he gave the plate a test whack.

 _Whoa, there, what if it’s alarmed?_ The voice snagged their muscles mid-swing and stopped his second strike. What if he put the axe in their face? That’d be extra alarming.

“Hooold on!” Maya thought the same. Powering toward him, she slapped her hand on the plate, well aware he wouldn’t risk hurting her. “How about we look for somewhere unlocked before we risk activating the defense systems?” It was Hyperion — she and the voice were right, there _would_ be defenses.

He holstered the axe and waved his arms around to suggest she resume leading.

Appreciative, she gave a nod, and walked a loop around the lower floor; testing every handle, prodding every keypad, jostling every lock. When she’d reached the rightmost room she ascended the staircase and swept the upper floor in the same manner. 

At the third-from-left door she paused. Quirking her eyebrow she pushed the handle down, and as she noticed it cooperate, gasped. It had a full range of motion! She released the handle and kicked just below it to swing the door open. It arced perfectly, as if it were only yesterday that the hinges had last been greased. Standing on the threshold she turned to him and beamed, two thumbs up.

Who wanted to see a Hyperion manager’s apartment? He did!! How many breakables did they keep in their kitchens? How badly could he ruin their plumbing? What if he left the taps running on check-out? He’d had bloody revenge and now he’d have petty revenge. The second best kind. Laughing, he scrambled upstairs after her, his hot, excited breath fogging his mask. _Don’t wreck it until she’s left. You’re doing okay. That could change in a single moment._

“UGH!! PARTY POOPER!”

Reaching the apartment, it became obvious why it’d been left unlocked — the belongings were packed away, and the plate didn’t have a name designation. The owners must’ve been in the process of leaving the company when the station fell. 

The front door lead straight into a combined living/kitchen area with boxes on the sofa, boxes on the bookshelves, boxes on the bar stools, boxes on the island counter — how this little room had needed so many was hard to imagine. There weren’t any natural windows this deep inside the station so a series of blank artificial windows were spaced across the walls. The dust had layered so thick across them that the unlit glass was gray instead of black.

Maya stood by one of them, idly doodling in the dust. “What do you think they showed?” she asked, back to him, “streams of people’s homeworlds? Or of Pandora from orbit? Which would you prefer, if you couldn’t have a real view?”

He found an empty space in the centre of the room and turned a circle to take in the whole space. His turn went a bit too fast. He saw nothing but blurred colours and vague motion. “UNENDING NIGHTMARES,” he said, not even sure himself whether he was describing how he felt or what he’d hope to see. An unending nightmare could be fun!

“I’d change it a lot,” she said. “There’s a lot out there. I love Pandora. I — miss Athenas.” Enough of the window. She went to check a box. “Which is stupid since The Order were terrible, but: there were other people on the planet and also a lot of unique books. Figured they’d kill me if I went back but you didn’t kill me for abandoning you so maybe?”

They looked at each other.

“... it’s just… _stupid_ , isn’t it?” This box was sealed with a name and address for the movers’ reference. “Whatever. I’ll figure it out with a bottle of wine in Moxxi’s backroom when we’re home.” 

Home. Pandora was still her home. His heart wobbled like a water balloon full of blood. He kept looking at her as she lifted the box and read the tag properly.

“Hah.” A half-hearted, deflated laugh. She raised it on one hand and pointed at it with the other. “Weird. Do you think Hyperion needed this whole place? ‘Cause it’s like they had about twenty staff. We keep running into the same few people.” Guiding her finger under the names she read aloud: “Heather and Setareh Samu —“

He lunged forward and yanked it from her hand; so much for everyone saying he had poor reading comprehension. She had no clue what she’d spoken into the air; the pollen, the mental hay-fever, the reflexive violence it provoked from inside him. He spat at her with stunning force: _ “SAMMY?” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, several years ago I got about 15k into writing a fic with Dr Samuels in it, but never posted it, and I’ve been sitting on kitschy headcanons for her ever since. This+the next chapter include a bunch of those. It’s the part of the story where I’m on thin ice re: canon, because I tried to be thorough with checking over the new game material, but I haven’t done every sidequest in BL3 and who knows what the DLC’ll hold. If we get different names and specifics on her and Krieg’s relationship in the future... c’est la vie? :D;;
> 
> Chapter 5: recording your experiments is important. Science is only science if you write it down. Or, even better, you could film it.


	5. do you have to recall? can’t we leave it there?

It’d been a while; Maya couldn’t remember which of the Samuels was relevant. “Heather or Setareh?” she asked, hands still outstretched where the box had been.

Krieg shook it, rattling the apparent stack of plates inside. “THE GOOD DOCTOR. SHE SAID SHE WAS SORRY BUT SHE’S HERE IN THE BAD PLACE.” He glanced from the label to Maya and back then dropped the box on the floor. _Cronk._ None of the plates sounded fundamentally broken, but he’d done some damage. “HELL IS EMPTY AND ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE.” He turned on his heel and raced into the apartment corridor, rebounding off door frames and tight corners rather than navigating properly.

As she reckoned through what he might’ve meant, Maya followed him into the corridor, and watched as he scoured the rooms for who-knew-what. They’d be lucky if _he_ knew what. His normal erratic behaviour had been overtaken by an anxious, manic, scrambling impulse to reach his Sammy and he was a full layer deeper into incoherence than she’d ever seen him — excluding their visit to the Wildlife Exploitation Project.

He’d looped through the bathroom, the study, and the laundry, knocking anything that wasn’t boxed onto the ground, and hitting the walls at random. “SAMMY!” he yelled at the far corner of the hall, where the Samuels had left another empty bookshelf.

“Shh, hey, calm down —” Maya tried, reaching out for him as he went for the last room in the place; the bedroom. 

He shrugged past. “SAMMY?”

“ — calm down —!” She lunged forward and grabbed his bandaged wrist, her fingers wrapping all of halfway around it. 

He stopped. His arms were shaking. He scowled at her until he realised what he was doing, and then his expression faded into a hollow, horrified stare. He shook her off and stepped back into the hall. “WASN’T SUPPOSED TO KEEP DOING THIS.” His pitch dropped as he made it through his sentence, choking itself into a lower register, like his throat had been grabbed by an invisible force.

She released him, but wouldn’t move any further from his side. “Doing what, Krieg?” she asked. Context gave her most of the answer but it was for him to confirm or deny or whatever third option his wild mind might suggest. 

“KEEP JACK’S COMPANY.” Wrenching his arm out of her grip, he stomped into the bedroom.

There was no linen left on the bed and the other furniture had tipped over in the crash. He didn’t avoid the debris; crushed a lamp and a side-table underfoot as he went to sit on the bedside. He moaned and put his head in his hands, his fingers curling around the edges of the mask and clicking the clips in and out of their slots. 

Maya sat beside him, leaving an inch in case he didn’t want to be touched.

The apartment was quiet. You could hear the shift of their clothes, the vibration of the bedsprings, the distant but repetitive beep of Hyperion systems at their eternal work. Helios was made with their signature quality; it would stand for a hundred years in operative form and a thousand more in recognisable decay. What they created was dark and destructive and inhumane... but they built to last. Any creation that lacked the necessary resilience would sooner destroy itself than admit such a failure. Live to fight or die fighting. 

Krieg turned to her and pulled her into an overwhelming hug, like she was a soft toy with some extra, pesky bones. His throat rumbled. He hugged tighter, though not so tight it would hurt. He hooked his chin over her shoulder; angling his face so the filter of his mask leaked heat onto her neck. The straps and bolts on his arms dug into her back. His breathing hitched. 

She reciprocated, hooking her arms around his waist and her hands behind his back, fingers juddering over his scars until they found each other. Her nose was stuck against his shoulder and she couldn’t find anywhere else to put it, her mouth too close to his collarbone — there was nowhere to move them so she resigned herself to that bit of discomfort. “Should we go someplace else? We can break a lock, if it’s easier. Sure a barricade’ll stop security if we wanna try that.”

He remained silent, tucking her further into the crook of his neck. 

“Whoa, hey —” She reined her head back to avoid it.

He loosened his hold.

“ — thanks,” she said. “Is there any benefit to sticking around, if it’s gonna hurt this much?” 

He released her entirely, turning to look straight ahead at the wall. He took several deep breaths. “HURTS ANYWAY.”

“So we’re staying?”

“EYE FOR AN EYE.”

“Makes the world blind. Besides, she’s not here. Neither of them are.” Still not clear which was _his_ Sammy, though if they were both in extended cahoots with Hyperion, it didn’t matter. Maya brought her legs up from the ground and crossed them underneath her. “‘Course, if you wanna smash it, be their guest. I’m happy provided you leave either the bed or the sofa intact.”

He stood and drew his axe. “KITCHEEEN.” He held the switch and spun the saw to accentuate the second syllable.

“Crockery. An excellent choice. Save a box, okay?” She was tired, literally (from running the station maze) and figuratively (from having to deal with so many keycards). The apartment had been a defensive choice until they reached the threshold but, like any decent accommodation, stepping within view of the bed had proven too alluring not to want a nap.

“FLIP THE REST WORSE THAN THE HOTCAKES.” His spirit half-restored, he wandered into the corridor, axe-saw spinning faster.

That left Maya the whole bed. Score! She flopped onto her back and rolled around until she was able to stretch herself out in every direction, arms splayed and toes pointed. She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Exhaling as much of her tension as she could she tried to enjoy the firm-yet-form-fitting springs of the uncovered bed. Would’ve preferred it to have a blanket or some pillows or a sheet but this was comfy on its own. Comfier than what she’d been given in The Backburner.

Most-way to dozing, she was able to ignore the irregular _smash_ of glassware from the kitchen, and the constant, dull buzz of machinery. Krieg’s cackles were too sincere to hate. The expansion and contraction of the metal exterior wall was gentle as waves against a cruise ship. 

What got her. And woke her. And infuriated her. Was the beeping. Though she’d taken it as a basic function of the station, the longer it went, the more it reminded her of the sound a fridge made when you left its door ajar, or a smoke alarm running out of battery. It wasn’t as ambient as she’d thought, either — by the hundredth _beep_ she’d located it somewhere to her left, which meant it originated from a single object and not the mainframe. 

She’d have to shut it down to get any rest. Wheeling her legs around and using them to leverage herself off the bed, she landed in a crouch, and kept low to make navigating the upturned room easier. 

Ducking under the slanted bookshelf and zig-zagging around a couple of tipped chairs she listened for the next beep in the hope of figuring a precise direction.

_Beep._

Keep going left. Left went into a wall. She rapped the wall with the back of her hand. “Krieg! Does this lead to the kitchen? Is the fridge open?”

Another bowl hit the floor, further away than she’d expected. “ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?” he replied. Then dropped a lighter piece of glass — maybe a measuring cup — for emphasis.

Whatever the wall backed into wasn’t the kitchen, but there hadn’t been any other rooms in that direction, and with the bedroom's positioning, they couldn’t fit a whole additional apartment in the nook. This lead somewhere. Maybe a sealed-over closet, or an inactive defense system that’d pop a turret gun out of the wall under normal electrical circumstances. 

She drummed the wall in a few spots. Didn’t seem like there were any secret doors. Which meant she’d need to create her own. Again, not much of a Lock job, but if her powers couldn’t handle it a rocket launcher could. “Hey, how bad an idea’s firing a rocket launcher in a place this small?”

He laughed. “DO IT!”

Hey, if they both thought it was worth a try… she activated her storage deck and swiped through the list until she found a launcher. Digistructing it and stashing her shotgun, she levelled it at the wall. This was a terrible idea. They would attract security. It might break too many walls and hurt Krieg in the other room or her with the splashback. But she didn’t have any other ideas; she didn’t want any other ideas; she wanted to fire a rocket launcher in a tiny apartment bedroom and see what happened. 

Holding it steady she yelled a bone-deep-satisfying “fire in the hole!!” and did as promised.

The rocket blew apart the wall she’d been targeting.

Flayed the gib from the exterior wall to show its steel innards.

And crumpled the adjacent bedside cabinet. 

The smoke overpowered her and the force shoved her onto the bed. Ash caked her face and fringe. Coughing, she forced herself into a sitting position faster than her body liked, and she assessed the damage her awesome plan had caused. Bit of bruising here and there, mostly on the arm she’d used to stabilise the rocket, but it blended with her tattoos and wouldn’t hurt unless she bumped the wrong place. Her limbs shook with adrenaline. “Woohoo!!” she called, genuine joy mixed with an urge to indicate she was okay.

“WOOHOO!” Call-and-response, like a flock of destructive birds, her and Krieg’s shouts and crashes in canon. He rained a whole set of glassware on the floor.

Less smoke. Visibility restored, she rolled onto her feet and approached the hole she’d made, blindly slapping the storage deck until the launcher dematerialised. Finding the least jagged edge of the gib she leaned through to the other side to see what the architects had been hiding. 

The beeping grew louder. It was dark. Didn’t matter about the smoke — couldn’t see anything anyway. Maybe the noise was from somewhere else? This inlet was nothing but a black hole. Just a cupboard someone forgot to leave access to. Walls in front, to the left and right, a ceiling above — wait! Some kind of mechanism at the edge of the ceiling. A slot like the side of an elevator for something to retract into. Something like — 

She looked around her at the shattered pieces of the wall and noticed, stuck to their undersides, a series of wires and concertina brackets. A false wall. That meant they’d overlooked a switch somewhere, too.

A switch wouldn’t have been as fun as the rocket launcher.

What was hidden inside this architectural pinata? Maya at last checked the floor and discovered an actual hole, a ladder descending to the lower level. With each beep a burst of red LED light filled the shaft. Bingo. Hidden room. She grabbed the top of the ladder and swung herself around onto it, then slid to the bottom ten feet below.

Ahead of her was a room layered in different computer consoles, each rigged to a massive battery plonked unceremoniously near the middle of the floor. The beeps and flashes came from the battery, which was determined to warn someone that the room was on emergency power and had a mere 538 days left until it ran out. Server room behind a secret door with overzealous notification systems and no decoration but its cascade of monitors? Someone was committed to the hacker vibe.

An office chair with the back snapped off was positioned in front of the central-ish monitor, where someone’s DIY ergonomic mouse-and-keyboard sat covered in dust. Blowing them clean Maya took a seat and clicked to wake the system. 

Next to her, the battery updated its power estimate to 536 DAYS LEFT. Okay, she’d make this quick.

She didn’t have real expectations for what she’d find on the desktop. Depending whether Hyperion knew about this room, it could be folders and folders of embarrassing softcore cartoons, a system for tracking stocks and hypercryptocurrencies, or someone trying to make their rig-building hobby seem cool and dramatic instead of whatever less positive adjective it actually was.

Behind the monitors, tower after tower awoke, heating the room to Pandoran-daytime temperatures in less than a minute. The central screen lit followed sharply by its attendants, some duplicating the display and others extending it, creating an erratic mess of images around the room, the screensaver rearranged into a giant expressionistic version of itself.

The screensaver was two women at their wedding; a tall blonde focused on cutting the cake, and her shorter partner in a hijab trying to distract her with a kiss. Despite the mock frustration on their faces they both seemed happy. Arms around waists, rings sparkling in the distinct pale sunlight of the Aegean system. She’d been through there recently. It’d been beautiful. Any of those planets would’ve been perfect for a wedding. 

Second click. She’d expected a password page but the system bounded ahead onto the desktop — the blonde in a floral shirt and shorts, naively relaxed on a beach as a massive wave snuck up behind her. Despite the massive amount of harddrive space the towers would’ve provided there weren’t many folders and programs left on the system; the default drives, installs, and a single stray ZIP to the right of the screen by the blonde’s shoulder. ‘Hi!’ it said.

Opening it Maya found a series of video files with date-based, non-indicative titles, and a README.TXT in the middle of them. Who was she to say no to a README? She double-clicked.

> If you’re reading this it means I’ve finally exited the company, or that Prof Badrinath has finally figured out that he’s supposed to have a walk-in wardrobe here (hi Professor!). 
> 
> Since Heather was sent to Pandora I’ve been storing copies of her reports in preparation for our case against Hyperion. It might sound naive, fighting a corporate, but someone did it on the ground so we can do it in a courtroom. Also we found a really multi-talented lawyer who promised she could cover every angle of the case; medical law, tax law, bird law — yeah, seriously, that’s important. You’ll see why.
> 
> In case I didn’t make it out alive I’m keeping the files intact on here for someone else to pass on. With any luck that’s a pointless failsafe (what can I say? Love a back-up) — if it’s not, keep them and use them to get revenge on our behalf. 
> 
> Heather’s already waiting somewhere safe. I miss her so much, but I know I’ll see her soon.
> 
> With love,
> 
> Tara Samuels

Tara and Heather. Tara Samuels, on Helios. Heather Samuels, on Pandora. The server room belonged to Tara and the videos belonged to Heather. That meant the videos were of —

Maya opened the first with all urgency.

🔪🔪🔪

_The lab was cold, especially for someone who’d dressed for Pandoran weather and been redirected last-minute to its second-largest satellite. In a button-down shirt and slacks he waited for his contact, adding an extra digit to his inconvenience fee for every passing minute. Maybe this’d be the job to even out his accounts after he’d wasted months working for Atlas’ bounced checks. Hyperion looked good on the exchange. If he took advantage he might be able to afford some of the hot tickets on Dionysia this season. Good reviews on that folk opera. He did up another button against his neck and checked the other approaches for movement._

_No sooner had his eyes left the main door than his contact strode through it, lanky and sharp and painfully professional. She wore a standard blue suit under her lab coat, both so clean they seemed to actively repel dirt. Halting in the middle of the floor she gave him a flat look through her thin-framed glasses. “The contractor,” she said, not bothering to make it a question._

_“Doc Samuels.” He set his hands on his hips to help assert himself and emphasize his capability, despite recent career setbacks and that hint of desperation he’d let slip over their ECHOs. “... how about ‘Sammy’?” Test for either a connection or a weak point — anything to help him close and take this from emails to an inked contract._

_She cracked a begrudging smile and enough of a laugh to reassure him he’d chosen a workable angle. “Sure. ‘Krieg’.”_

_“It’s not real, if you hadn’t called it already,” he said, “just for keeping the amateurs from attempting hits. If they can’t get my full name, they wouldn’t stand a chance at the follow-through.”_

_That made sense. She relaxed and removed her glasses, tucking them over her coat pocket. “Before we get this in writing I want to know you’re comfortable with a bit of in-fighting. Hyperion had a restructure recently and some of us aren’t happy with the change in direction.”_

_Shrugging, he leaned back against her desk. “If you’re looking for a promotion that’s your own responsibility. If you’ve already gone for it and you need protection, that might be doable. Policy’s simple: I won’t shoot anyone who hasn’t shot first — at me or at somebody else — and I won’t risk collateral. I’m not an assassin. I’m a bounty hunter or I’m a bodyguard. That what you’re after, Sammy?”_

_Her eyes darted around the entrances, then to a blinking amber light in the corner. Camera. Course, if she was an R &D biologist, there’d be reasons to record her work. More reason if it’d put her in danger. Had to be danger with that reaction. “Can you keep me safe once we’re planetside? There’s a lot of risk where I’m headed. You never know where it’ll come from. Around, or… above.” _

_Bodyguard it was. Hadn’t been one in a while, though Atlas’d let him stick to his do-unto-others policy. There was a kind of satisfaction in it you didn’t get from murder. Saving someone instead of killing them. Made it feel like there was justice in the universe. Hadn’t felt it often since he’d finished that last ethics paper, got his degree and his first pile of debts. Could’ve thrown himself into the internship grinder or taken a gun and hit the galaxy — the only thing stronger than his beliefs was his sense of self preservation so here he was._

_Here he was. He raised his chin and waved two fingers at the camera. Krieg: reporting for duty._

☄️☄️☄️

Who was that? Who even was that? He had Krieg’s face and Krieg’s name, but he was put together, not a cut on him except a rogue divot through his lip. She recognised that, at least, because it’d reopened at some point and scabbed with a crystalline purple mix of blood and slag. 

He had hair; not a full head, that would’ve been too weird, a mottled blond undercut swept forward in a punkish cockerel comb, held up with an artful amount of gel. He wore a shirt! Navy blue, short rolled sleeves. His tags peeked from under the collar to help ID him. 

That face, frozen at the end of the video, smiling an unbroken smile to whoever might watch. He was handsome. She'd admit it. If she didn't she couldn't say she understood how reluctant he was to show what'd happened. Eridium scars weren't ugly but they were conspicuous. Big streams of purple running through his skin like they'd run through the ground, unable to heal because they weren't true damage — ground subsiding to liquefaction, rivers claiming land. 

He had his piercings and his muscles. There was some of himself in what he'd become. But less than she'd expected. Much, much, less.

She wanted to hear that voice again. Gentle, teasing, words selected with a novelist's care.

As wood splintered and the cabinets themselves came apart above her she clicked a later report.

🔪🔪🔪

_Everyone'd told him to pack for the desert, but Pandora had plenty of other biomes, and now here he was in a useless linen safari jacket trying to survive the precipitous temperatures of the highlands. Trade to the planet was slow and he wouldn't have anything warmer for a few weeks, unless he cheaped out and used the Quick-Change. Brrr. Fuck this._

_Sammy had been called in for a video conference with Helios, and as a contractor, he wasn't permitted to join her. Left at the door with a much more menial guard task than his usual he was too bored to ignore the temperature — was about the only bit of stimulation he'd get on his own in the lab. Didn't know how to operate the testing equipment or the password for the desktop. His ECHO was busted (stupid Dahl) and he couldn't play any games. He'd hummed a few bars of_ Carmen _until the techs walked past and gave him a look. Normally his size did plenty to intimidate people but he dressed too nice to worry these locals. Fancy lad from Promethea? Might be big, but he didn't have the teeth for this planet._

_If his reputation slipped much further Sammy might fire him, and then he'd never clear what he owed. No humming. No singing. Don't quote Shakespeare. Do NOT quote Shakespeare. He pulled his rifle from his back, across his chest, and held it empty against him. When he was home in his bed he could watch whatever, be whatever, marathon a whole season of that Duchess show people were raving about — this wasn’t somewhere to admit what he was: a huge goddamn nerd._

_Behind him there were footsteps and consenting_ boops _from the security system as Sammy finished her call. He turned to see her step out._

_She’d developed guts of iron over eight years of biology study and another ten in the Hyperion labs, but whatever’d been said in the call turned them anyway, and her face was tinted sick-green. Silently she crossed past him to her desk and took a seat. Her arm braced across the desk, she refused to look anywhere but the ground._

_Had their funding been cut? Jack was personally invested in the WEP and even with Krieg pushing his luck with some of his expense claims, they’d run under budget the last two months. Unless there’d been bad personal news there wasn’t anything else worth this kind of reaction._

_He went to her side and hovered a hand near her shoulder, offering wary comfort._

_She leaned into it and let out a choke-sigh. “We’re moving on from skags,” she said._

_“To what?” he said, almost adding a crack about rakk hives until he realised it probably wasn’t appropriate, lax as their professionalism was._

_“Just some bandits.” She drummed a fist on the desk, barely restraining herself from outright punching it. “His choice of words. Development on Opportunity started last week and some of the residents refused to be bought out.” The drumming slowed to a steady, foreboding beat. “Firestone’s scheduled for three weeks from today. After that, Liar’s Berg. Every settlement from here to the polar islands. Sure he has plans for Aegrus too.”_

_If his reach exceeded his grasp, no worries, he could Digistruct a longer arm for that. The LoaderBots could handle civilians. Deploy Hyperion troops to Bandit Camps that resisted, anywhere in need of a human touch. Handsome Jack had the technology to fulfill his ambition, unlike a lot of the other corporates. Pandora still thought it was dealing with Dahl, or Atlas. The trouble with a deadly reputation was how it made you forget other creatures could be deadlier. Krieg used his free hand to hook his rifle back in its holster. “Was this what you expected?”_

_She shook her head. “A hit. A ‘workplace accident’. He’s seen me stop tamer projects than this — assumed this deployment was about revenge.”_

_“How do we know it’s not?”_

_“Because he’d need leverage to make it happen.” Wiping her glasses off on her cuffs, she looked up at Krieg with whatever skepticism she had left. “What could he do, fire me?”_

☄️☄️☄️

Upstairs, the plates had run out, and Maya could hear heavy footsteps zig-zagging through the other rooms in search of a fresh spread of breakables. He was still distracted. She could keep watching. At the mercy of her curiosity she opened another.

🔪🔪🔪

_“Real shame we can’t move onto human trials, huh?”_

_Handsome Jack was on the line, and Krieg was in the room. This wasn’t like the last call — they’d been doing paperwork in the lab when Sammy’s ECHO brightened, unscheduled, and the CEO’s face appeared onscreen with his smile spread as wide as its upper latex layer went. ‘Got a moment?’ For him, always._

_“The skags still aren’t getting anything out of the injections,” Sammy bluffed, convincingly impassive, “it’s not worth it at this stage.”_

_“Yeah, yeah yeah, I read the report.” Jack slid a tablet across his desk and waved it at the camera. When he was sure they’d got the point he threw his over his shoulder onto the ground behind him. It made a startling_ crack _as it landed. “Read every frickin’ word of it. Lotta words! That’s how I know I got a good scientist; I ask for a yes or a no and I get a thousand umms and ahhs a week late.” He leaned in and ran his hand along his face, stretching the mask so they could see his burns through the eye-and-mouth holes. “Got some words for_ you _too, Doc.”_

_“Oh?” She leaned back in her chair, almost hitting Krieg where he was crouched near its arm. She waved a hand at him in vague apology. “If something’s changed…”_

_“Less a statement, more a question.” Fumbling offscreen he found a cup of coffee, which he raised to his lips and sipped for enhanced casualness. “There’s this woman in Networks and Security. Uhh… Tara, think they call her?”_

_She tensed._

_“Our ECHOnet access went a bit weird when we passed Elpis yesterday so I dropped by to make sure they’d fixed it and, haha, hey, we got talking; turns out Setareh Samuels is your wife! Isn’t that cute? Surprised anyone married you, but some people’re born luckier than they deserve. Prrrobably not lucky enough for a second chance if anything happens to her, though.”_

_Her eyes steadily widened._

_“Which is why I thought I’d ask — ya mind if I kill her?”_

_He tapped the side of the ECHO device, twisting it to show Tara knelt on the ground nearby, arms tied and mouth gagged, too furious to scream or cry. Behind her stood an officious-looking man with a pistol, already tired of what was probably his fifth hostage situation of the day. Hyperion was pivoting from making guns to making enemies, it seemed, whether C-suite liked it or not._

_Stepping out of his chair and confiscating the gun from his assistant, Jack put it to Tara and continued to sip his coffee. “She’s just_ adowabwe _and it’d be a shame but since money isn’t motivating you to do your job I figured this would,” he said as he poked her cheek with the barrel._

_“She’s —!” Sammy struggled for a protestation that wouldn’t pull the trigger. “She’s your employee too!”_

_“Aww, nooo, not an employee.” He laughed and gestured to the side of the room. “Cupcake, I put an intern out the airlock this morning for serving cold coffee. If you’re not doing what you’re supposed to, why’re you on payroll anyway?” Passing the pistol back to the assistant he reapproached the ECHO. “Get it? I want us to take some slag and put it in some humans and see if it doesn’t yield some cool new toys. Make it happen!”_

_“... Got it.” Her stare held on the screen, though it didn’t look at anything in particular, neither Jack nor Tara in the background._

_“There’s a girl.” He leant in to the device. “Peace,” he said, ending the call._

_Sammy spun to face Krieg; her throat pulsed with fear and vomit, her face was scrunched, and she was scratching at her palms with her chipped nails. She couldn’t speak or she’d throw up. Couldn’t stand or she’d run to the bathroom. Either she sat still and silent or she totally lost her nerve. She’d been so diminished by Jack that her immaculate suit seemed comically oversized, tailored to a version of her that he’d reduced from existence._

_Which meant he had to be the level one. He put his hand on her knee and looked at her boots so she could save face. “You hired me to be your bodyguard,” he said, “but if someone else needs saving —”_

_“There’s — there’s a shuttle launching from Overlook tomorrow — and if we borrow a uniform, we — we —”_

_“I can do stealth. Where do I take her after?”_

_“Far as possible. Further. Somewhere he can’t reach. Junpai —”_

_“Would Partali do? Got some contacts there who’ll hide us. Anti-corporate. Won’t break under torture; proven it.”_

_“S-sure.” She grabbed his shoulders and tipped him to face her. She was crying, but she refused to wipe her eyes or blow her nose and admit it. Her entire upper face had gone splotchy red from the pressure. Leaning in she hugged him around the neck — not with any affection, just a desperate desire for reassurance that someone was there to help._

_He allowed it, though the prospect of sneaking into Helios was already boring an acidulous pit through his stomach. He’d snuck into places. He’d caused trouble for Maliwan and Dahl and poor, irrelevant S &S. Recovering someone from under the watchful eye of Hyperion’s CEO was on a new, terrifying level. It probably couldn’t be done. _

_Sammy held him with such trust he knew he had to try._

_He would ride that shuttle into whatever hell it carried him._

☄️☄️☄️

A voyeuristic chill ran through her as she moused over to the next video. The footsteps upstairs had stopped, there was nothing but silence and the freezeframe, Heather’s arms around Krieg in joyous anticipation of her escape with her wife.

Were they alive together out there? Did anyone have a happy ending? With some work, she could find them; Zer0 alone had enough contacts to search most of the habited planets in the six galaxies. The idea that all three of them had failed to escape Pandora’s orbit was too scary to want to try. This planet was like a giant monster consuming everything that came close and for the first time since she’d left it Maya felt pure validation in her choice.

It was fun. It was freedom. Until you wanted to leave. Then it sucked you into its maw, chomped you to pieces, and digested you into an unrecognisable sludge of the parts that’d made you. Turned heroes into villains, love into a liability, men into monsters.

He’d _been_ someone. She was clicking closer and closer to his undoing. She wouldn’t stop; she knew that too, like people knew they would answer the call from the hospital or check the noise outside at midnight. He’d never been able to tell her how it happened. Whether it was an inability to articulate the series of events that’d lead to his capture or shame that he’d been caught or pain at the recollection he’d refused to say.

She was too inquisitive — selfish, maybe — to reject the chance to learn. The point of a record was letting other people discover what you knew without you needing to be present. Heather had thought his experience was worth recording. Tara had thought it was important for others to watch. Insatiable as ever Maya couldn’t bring herself to disagree. 

Someone had to know.

So, full of guilt, and satisfaction, and immeasurable anticipation, she opened it, and lifted her legs onto the chair to hug them as she watched.

🔪🔪🔪

_Strapped to a metal slab in the darkest part of the labs, clothes confiscated, he was colder than he’d thought possible. His breath puffed from his mouth in visible white curliques, accents on sentences his head hurt too much to produce. They’d jumped him at the Hall of Heroism and cracked his skull, and returned him to the shuttle sans ID or weapons. Two guards were posted by his unconscious body to make the handover._

_He’d never even gotten a look at Tara. Since his return to the WEP he hadn’t seen Sammy either. Someone might kill him without anyone knowing where he’d gone. His parents on Promethea, his siblings studying on the Alexandrian planets, each friend and ex and rival out there in the cosmos — no-one would hear about this. Though maybe that was preferable to them seeking revenge against the company that’d finally broken his flawless record of success. There wasn’t anyone better equipped to fight Hyperion than he was and he’d lost._

_As the brain-damage blur cleared from his vision he noticed the tiniest detail in the top-right corner of the room: a pinprick of amber light. He smiled at it. Krieg: retired from duty._

_In the top-left corner was a screen, blank, with a red light underneath. Of course. Jack’d want to watch. Gloat. If no-one else came to the execution at least he’d get to die screaming at someone he hated. Bit of satisfaction in place of a final meal._

_Three-ish minutes of wait and the screen-light turned green. There was movement in the hall, beyond the rock-face wall and the prison-thick metal door. The screen flicked on and the door opened. Jack’s face above him. Sammy’s ahead of him._

_“Come to visit the condemned? I’m touched,” he said, wavering between genuine appreciation and bitter sarcasm as he looked between his guests._

_Sammy was too stunned to speak, so Jack took the lead. “Figured I’d follow-up on our call yesterday, given the change in circumstances.” He was in his office with Tara and his assistant posed like before, though neither of them looked so serious today, now the repetition had set in. If Krieg’d reached her he would’ve told her ‘atta girl’ for how she stuck this shit out. Not many kidnappees with her sense of calm. His was fading fast. “Someone, not naming names, sent this stupid merc on a rescue mission instead of following orders.”_

_“I sent myself, asshole —”_

_“Don’t waste your breath, bandit, not many minutes of it left.” Jack tutted and tapped the pocketwatch on his blazer. “Anyway the whole sitch got me thinking: what do I do? Kill the wife, there’s no leverage for Sammy. Kill Craig or whatever his name is, we’re back where we started. Then I had a frickin’ awesome idea! Earned my billion credits for the day.” He leaned closer to the camera so it’d show his beaming, patchwork face in as much detail as possible. “He’s so keen to be part of the team? Can’t quite do that but we can make him the guest of honour._

_“Sammy, be a doll and get to work on him, would ya?”_

_It was what he’d expected but hearing it sent a deeper chill through his spine. He arched against his restraints and growled at Jack. “They don’t matter! It’s between us.”_

_Jack pouted, a gesture he couldn’t manage without creating awkward puckers around his fake lips. “Who? Me and you, Craigory? Pfft. Nah. The muscle doesn’t matter. Never does! This world is for the masterminds. Sammy bet you against me and lost. You’re my playing chip now. We’re gonna have lots of fun at the roulette table. What’re the odds she gave us?” He turned to his assistant. “Hey Blake! What’d the report say about the odds?”_

_Lips creaking into motion, visibly dry, he answered, “62 on death, 34 on disfigurement or debilitating health issues, 4 on superpowers.”_

_Jack jazz-handed at the camera. “For the idiot merc: that’s 1-in-25! Bet on worse before.”_

_“I’m not doing this,” Sammy whispered, pausing at Krieg’s side with her back to the camera, “I won’t. This is a terrible compromise.”_

_“Hey.” He put on his brave face, but it wobbled, the sides of his smile unhappy with what they were asked to do. To survive in his line of work you had to accept that defeat’d eventually come, and it’d suck when it did, much worse than in other fields. He’d expected it to be quick and anonymous and that he could admit how bad it hurt. Not like this. “Don’t disappoint him. Do it quick and be with Tara. I’m a hired gun, I’m supposed to get shot eventually. You’re a scientist. Meant to do your experiments and go home to your wife.” He nodded in support of his statement. “Stay safe.”_

_She looked at him through her fogged glasses, and held there until Jack started complaining — a rant neither of them could be bothered listening to — as she accepted what she was about to do. She clasped his hand and shook it with both of hers in a collegial goodbye. “I don’t mean this how it’ll sound,” she said, “but I hope it kills you.”_

_He closed his eyes. He couldn’t look at her and hold onto his smile. “I hope so too.”_

_“Jack!” she yelled at the screen. “Have someone bring the equipment. I can’t exactly start without it.”_

_“Hey BLAKE. Have someone bring her the equipment.”_

_She went into the corridor to wait for her supplies. The door closed loudly behind her. The buzz of the screen and the soft gush of the highland wind through the WEP ventilation remained. The call was still open, monitoring Krieg for any other stupid plans he might put into action._

_He opened his eyes to look at Jack. There he was, eating a salad he’d summoned from offscreen. “Food on the station okay?” Krieg croaked, relaxing into his restraints and losing the smile._

_“UhHH.” Jack almost choked on an olive in surprise. As he coughed it out and into the bowl, slapping his chest, he grinned angrily in response. “Haha. ‘Course. I —_ ack _— had us poach Maliwan’s best for the kitchens. Those Katagawas’ve been sending revengents for weeks.” Annoyed at the olive, he lanced a sundried tomato instead. “Revengents is our internal term for people who wanna kill me because I did stuff. Y’know, revenge agents. Got protocol for ‘em which is how we caught onto you. I’d rank you about a level 2 on the revengent assessment matrix; made it aboard but not too far.”_

_“I’ll have to try for a level 3 in the future.”_

_“Works the other way ‘round, level 1’s the best, but maybe you’re gonna intentionally suck harder? Bandits have some weird ideas.”_

_“Normally,” Krieg said, “I don’t let it get personal.”_

_“Neither do I. It’s super embarrassing Sammy’s had us do a big routine. We didn’t have to be here, Craig. This is her fault.”_

_“Didn’t take it personal when I got kicked outta the assassins guild for picking on the other members, or when someone appeared on my doorstep at midnight ‘cause I’d killed their doubles partner.”_

_“Uhuh, uhuh, which is why —”_

_“If I don’t die here, though.” His eyes went ice-cold as the rest of him as the last of the civility left his heart. Jack wanted to be a sadist? Fine. Take a knife to a knife fight. Make it messy. Make it hurt. “You’re gonna wish you’d used a gun.” He didn’t like to scare people, but since age 12, his size made it inevitable. Any skill the universe offered you was worth practicing. He spread his mouth wide and showed his worst grin, 32 oversized teeth in two sharp rows, the scar above his lip adjusting the expression into a canine snarl. Someone’d woke the wrong dog._

_That made Jack laugh. Absolutely guffaw. Gobsmacked. Choking on half-chewed tomato like he’d never heard a funnier joke in his life, though he’d probably heard it every day this week with a word adjusted here and there. His mask contorted out-of-sync with the face underneath. He dropped his forkful of quinoa over his lap. He slapped his thigh and mushed the grains into his jeans._

_As he recovered, he got so close to the camera that nothing was visible but his own awful teeth, and emphasis on every syllable, he spat: “I’ll be waiting.”_

☄️☄️☄️

There was movement in the bedroom. A crackle of plywood underfoot.

Dozens of videos left unviewed.

Fine. She only needed to see one more.

🔪🔪🔪

_When he’d arrived, the compound had been quiet at night. It wasn’t unusual for him to leave Sammy with her co-workers and the facility guards in the dining hall and take his break on the adjacent hilltop. Carefully selecting a comfortable rock he’d sit and uncap a beer on whatever passed for a bottle opener nearby. Tipping it in appreciation of the view he’d drink. He’d swallow. Him and the wind and the sunset. When he reached the glass bottom and felt confident no-one else’d made the hike, he’d sing a few bars. Be himself for a moment. Where his reputation wasn’t in danger. ‘A song to fix what’s wrong / take what’s broken, make it whole / a song so beautiful / it brings the world back into tune’... It wasn’t Promethea, it wasn’t home, there were no shows to watch and no audience to share the moment with. The notes were outside his range. This hilltop, though, this peace and solitude and honesty — they were enough. With that much he could be happy._

_Now there were noises well past dark, and he was kept to a cell where the camera stayed on him all-hours._

_Every moment a new sound. Most of them were real but if they stopped his mind would repeat the worst of them to fill the silence. Constant scratching from the neighbour whose arms were covered in purple scabs. Heavy slap of skin into a bucket as the janitorial staff removed some remains and reclaimed a cell. Metal and glass rattling on its way to the theatres. Bolder sounds, screams or saw blades, tended to be short — so they were easier to bear than the creeping repetition of the labs at work._

_His own breathing got to him sometimes. In contrast to the fresh air outside they pumped acrid gases into the cells and workrooms (whether to mask the smell or subdue the subjects, he couldn’t say) which brought back the asthma he thought he’d left in his childhood. Some days he woke wheezing and desperate for oxygen. This was somehow noteworthy; they scanned his lungs but refused to give him the results or any treatment._

_The cell was cut from the mountainside, stone and shale, and they’d graciously installed a bench along with the bars. He’d been given clothes, though they confiscated them whenever he was taken for injections, and a coarse polyester blanket. Too small. Getting smaller. Just as he caught himself thinking the drama over the experiments was overblown and the hardest part was surviving the conditions he was kept in, he noticed he’d grown an inch or two and some extra muscle mass, despite being a sedentary 28 year old. Less than a week later the discolouration splotched across his chest like lichen on untreated wood — little patches of violet with rough edges. In the center of the larger splotches a scab had started to form. When he itched them, they broke off to reveal crystal instead of flesh. Whatever was pumping through him wasn’t entirely blood anymore._

_They were running late this evening. He’d been scheduled for a check-up at 5pm, but based on the lack of sunlight through the hole in the ceiling nearby, it was well past that and there’d been no sign of any scientists. Keep him waiting too long and he’d have to make a complaint to the manager. Could someone get Jack on the line?_

_Aha-ha-ha-haa. A bit of prison humour. It_ was _a prison; the bars, the orange clothes, the dour attitude of the staff. None of them, not even the meanest bastards he’d had the displeasure of calling co-workers, had been happy about the change in test subjects. Those with limited empathy for their human charges still had to contend with the snappier, harsher management of Sammy and her immediate team. The highlands — once a place of uneasy calm — were descending into chaos._

_Breaking the silence came the whine of tiny wheels, and footsteps, as someone pushed a gurney through a distant corridor. Sporadic moaning went with it. Another inmate on the verge of death. Technically you didn’t have to be lucky to die. 62% chance. But the pain the surviving 38% of subjects were in made them jealous._

_He wheezed and rolled around on the bench, flipping onto his front so it’d be easier to cover his ears. No reputation left to ruin, he was free to sing, put up a cheery barrier between him and the inmate: “on the road to hell there was a railroad track…”_

Train come rolling: clickity-clack.

_This voice was not in his mind. But it was close. Somehow. A whisper in his ear, a growl pitched low; angry at him for some unknown slight. Thrumming through his eardrums into depths of him._

_He twisted his head to the side to look for the speaker but his cell was empty._

Those who go don’t come back.

_His positioning made it impossible but the sound somehow came from above and behind him, as if the speaker were perched on his shoulder. He heaved a breath. He pulled the blanket further around him, audibly stretching the fibre as he attempted to cover the rest of his back. If no-one was coming he could fall asleep. Avoid it. The worst noise yet._

_Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Goddamnit, sleep! It’s how you’ll keep surviving. They can put you in the cold and make you sick and leave shit in your cell and feed you every second day but they can’t stop you sleeping. He banged his fists against his ears to ring the intruder out, like a bell in a temple. He groaned, aloud, his throat, himself._

_The gurney turned a corner and approached his cell. The moaning had stopped. That errand complete, it was his turn. At last. Yes. Take him. He went limp and lay faced in the other direction as he waited for the operators to loop their arms through his and carry him away per their routine._

_Two men grabbed him and lifted him onto the gurney, where they secured him with leather straps. What he hadn’t expected was the third figure alongside them: a tall, blonde woman in a blue suit._

_Sammy touched her fingertips to a splotch on his chest. There was a_ tck _as they hit the crystal centre. “Thank you for mentioning this,” she said to the older of her two assistants, “this’ll need excision before it spreads.”_

_“Hey, doc,” he croaked. He wasn’t sure how he felt seeing her after several weeks impersonal treatment from her subordinates. Suppose he was still under contract. Subordinate too._

_“Krieg. We’ll have to put you under. The slag’s resolidifed and it’ll fossilise your organs if we don’t remove it somehow.”_

_He tried to reach for her but his wrists were bound._

_She shook her head, never meeting his eyes. “Before this you were like — like a duck to water. Forget what I said about dying. If we manage the side effects I think you’ll be fine. A lucky duck, huh?”_

_“Cut me open?” he asked, losing half the words he’d planned to use._

_“To help the healing,” she said._

Won’t help.

_He startled and flattened himself across the gurney. The voice was too low to be Sammy’s and neither of the assistants had spoken. They weren’t close enough for it either. Like he had headphones on. Straight in his ear. He panted as he failed to talk himself out of a panic attack._

_Noticing his distress she gestured her assistants aside. “Preventative medicine. I swear it’s preferable to the alternative. We were late because I was triple-checking the scans.” She took his hand between hers. “It’ll leave some scars but it’ll save you.”_

Nothing saves us but us!

 _He_ crushed his grip inwards _and_ bared his teeth _as the voice grew louder._ “Knives bad!” _It spat as it relocated to his own throat. Somehow it was drawing air into him in quantities he hadn’t tasted since he’d been captured. His temperature was rising and as it did the Eridium that’d set on his innards began to melt. The taste of it sat on his tongue; burnt metal._

_“That hurts; you’re hurting me —”_

“Hurt each other!” _Unbidden, his hand closed tighter, the veins glowing violet beneath his skin._

_She indicated for the assistants to help._

_Forcing them apart, the older assistant left Sammy with his colleague, then moved to buckle a few extra restraints around Krieg’s shoulders and hips. “Come on, we’re trying our best.”_

_He_ roiled to prevent them being cinched in, _no he didn’t why would he care when resisting was pointless_ someone had to show they couldn’t be treated like an animal _who is ‘they’ why did the voice care_ bodily autonomy, a human right, they would reclaim it! _Whichever way he turned inside himself the routes to his nerves closed, preventing him from stopping the erratic actions he watched his limbs taking._ With the additional force his slag-infused muscles granted him he headbutted forward.

_The assistant took the blow on the top of his head and fell backwards with a startled yelp._

_“What do we do?” the other asked, making incomplete movements toward the various objects and people in range, at a total loss._

_Reaching onto the tray on the lower level of the gurney Sammy grabbed a hypodermic needle, still in the package, and a sealed vial of clear liquid. “Let’s tranquilise him. He’ll be grateful when it’s over,” she said. As she drew from the vial she kept her distance. “Hold him so I can inject.”_

_As the second assistant closed on him, Krieg_ thrust his arms forward _—_ intent on breaking the restraints _—_ and riding a swell of energy tore them free. He took the assistant by the collar and threw them onto the first with a giddy laugh as he registered the success of the whole manoeuvre.

_Preoccupied with his tiny victory he didn’t manage to block Sammy as she dove in with the anaesthetic._

_In a last defensive flail he_ dodged sideways _and into the path of the needle._

_She buried it in his right eye._

He let out a guttural howl.

☄️☄️☄️

The axe hit the central monitor in a shower of glass. “THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN.”

Maya whipped around to see Krieg at the base of the ladder, bent from his axe-throw, pain in his remaining eye. The central monitor sparked dangerously next to her but the picture remained steady on several dozen others throughout the room, his anguished face looking at them from where he lay. 

She didn’t feel guilty anymore, just sad and unwilling to call what she’d done wrong. Someone had to know who he was. Whether she was the best or worst person for it — what’s done is done. “Krieg.”

“I SPRANG FULLY FORMED FROM THE THIGH OF THE UNIVERSE TO FORGE A WARPATH ACROSS THE STARS.”

“Then why do you have those arguments with yourself?” She didn’t stand, kept sat in the chair with practiced Athenian calm. “Who’s in there?”

“HE —!” Krieg stomped closer, fists clenched at his sides, purple vapour fuming from his mask. “HE MADE A PACT, THAT WE’D FIGHT UNTIL IT KILLED US, AND IT HASN’T SO WE’LL KEEP ON TOGETHER.” Without bothering to undo the clasps he ripped it from his face and threw it to his side, cracking and disabling another monitor. The slag scars grew across his cheek like vines, slithering out of his wounds and splaying across any free surface they could find. His eye socket was a mine pit to the Eridium in his brain. What hadn’t been overtaken by the glow wore the same monstrous grin as the man on the monitors but meant it in a way that he couldn’t then. “Handsome Jack is dead because of us!”

Historical revisionist bullshit. She stood to meet him. “I was there too. Sal, Ax, Gaige, Zer0, Lilith — we did it as a team. It’s not like the videos. You’re not alone.” She’d never been this close to him without his mask. His wounds smelt like rot and battery acid. They were so bright it was impossible to focus on his intact side. “We love you.”

He choked. The slag subsided, shrank into the cracks, and he pulled his arms into the contours of his waist like he’d suddenly been put under restraints. A growl rose in his throat. Built slowly, wetly, into his mouth. Until he screamed, “ _no!!_ ”

She reached for him, but it was too late — he turned and ran, scrambling up the ladder and into the apartment above.

A quick glance back at the axe — need it? — no, he wouldn’t get far — and then she gave chase. Placing a Phaselock at the top of the shaft she launched herself to the upper level without the fuss of a climb, and rolled across the bed to the corridor, only collecting minor bruises from bumped shins and shoulders on the way. 

His footsteps hammered corners ahead of her and sped at a pace she couldn’t manage. 

She bit into her cheeks and forced her legs to move faster. 

They burst from the apartment, into the central hall, where she saw him vault the barrier and slam to the ground floor. At this point there was no way to tell where he intended to go. The obvious choice was outside, but they’d taken so many lifts to reach this level, it was impossible to know how far from the standard exit they were or how high the faster option was. She could Phaselock him if she got a clear line of sight but he was panicking and it’d be safer to let him stop on his own.

Through the corridor to the senior offices and labs, where he paused to orient himself and pick a direction. Despite stalling he hadn’t stilled — he twisted around in a nervous fugue, the hunt was on and he was the prize, he bobbed and lurched out of imagined sights, loaded with some kind of primal horror he couldn’t ignore or deny. As she closed on him he dove toward the lifts.

Since they’d come through the area had filled with multicoloured lights, bots on patrol and clean-up duty, running delivery routes with empty trolleys, the station’s second shift unable to abandon their futile posts. Krieg was on collision course with a few of the janitorial bots; they weren’t security so they wouldn’t bother him, would they? 

Why would she ever trust Hyperion to be reasonable? “Watch out!” she called.

He looked over his shoulder at her. His eye went wide. He sped; directly into a janitor bot pushing a cart full of supplies. He toppled over, mixed in with a bucket of soapy water and half a dozen mops, and splayed across the floor. Too erratic to find his feet he lay there a few seconds as the bot mimed frustration at the loss of its equipment.

The noise, unfortunately, attracted the attention of the security bots passing nearby. They lurched to the scene and ran their scanner over the pile.

She’d expected less diagnostics, more shooting. Urgency diminished she slid behind a planter for cover and peered around the corner in case it got violent. She clutched her SMG between her hands and took a series of meditative, patient breaths. He’d stopped running and no-one was trying to kill them — they’d be fine when the robo-commotion ended.

“Loose asset!” The lead security bot pronounced. “This is not the correct location for its storage.” Not gunfire but that didn’t sound healthy for him either. “Issuing call for transport for item 14602 to Research and Development.” Nope, nope, nope, it was for sure unhealthy.

However (the fact this still meant something sickened her and amused her in equal measure): he’d be taken to research and development.

A LoaderBot digistructed in the corner of the room and lumbered across to the spill, where it leant over and hooked an arm around Krieg’s waist.

He squirmed as it flipped him upside-down, kicking its head and elbowing its chest, and reached to his belt for his axe. The axe he’d left lodged in Tara’s monitors. He spluttered out a scream of frustration and went to punch it instead. 

Before his fist could connect with the metal the security bot intervened, electrocuting him with a taser attachment on its arm. “Asset 14602,” it announced, “destruction of other Hyperion property is not allowed. Cooperate or you will forfeit your right to remain conscious.” Its arm buzzed menacingly, the current still active.

Krieg, a devoted practitioner of rational thought, tried to punch the taser-arm in retaliation.

“Enough, prisoner.” The security bot lowered its screen cleaners like eyebrows and gave him a nastier shock.

He convulsed, an inhuman amount of electricity surging through his body, his conductivity enhanced by the slag and his metal implants. He made an awful noise, not even a scream anymore; a thousand dying days crushed into a single moment and out of his lungs. Bits of his anatomy flashed through his skin — pierced organs, fractured bones, augmented muscle. For a moment his left arm swelled as his agony and rage searched for an outlet.

Then he was unconscious, as the LoaderBot and the security bot escorted him onto the lift, the mirrored walls of the elevator car reflecting the number ‘47’ at Maya as she remained crouched behind the wall, reluctant to intercede.

She’d get him back. He just had to be patient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a couple of notes!
> 
> 1\. even though it's at least somewhat just how Borderlands is written, I've always liked to think inner Krieg's references+outer Krieg's poetics are a result of him being into theatre and prestige films/shows in his downtime, hence my nerd-tinged take on him.
> 
> 2\. Sammy caring enough about Krieg to bother contacting him individually in Son of Crawmerax felt like an admission they'd had a prior relationship before the WEP shit went down, and given the stuff he's mentioned about his career, 'he was working as a guard' seemed like a logical connection for them to share :D
> 
> Chapter 6... each to their own; Krieg and Maya confront the fears that drove them apart


	6. together or apart

What had they done? Abandoned on the floor of some kind of animal enclosure, they washed their wounds in a bowl of stagnant water and tried their best not to catch any reflective surfaces. What had they done? The pair of them in agreement that the man in the video wasn’t coming back. FURIOUS TO LOOK AT HIM. _Heartbroken to remember he existed._ Worthless, garbage, idiot.

_He’d been someone. Krieg had been someone, a man who liked live theatre and button-down shirts and a bit of morally-defensible murder. Two eyes, a full mouth, symmetrical features which didn’t scare anyone unless they tried. Here he was crouched in an artificial cave smearing blood and slag across his face in a futile attempt to look fit for society when stupid fucking robots knew he didn’t belong anymore — a thing, a thing, an animal if he was lucky and a object if he wasn’t. He broke the mould and the manufacturer and discontinued himself because even as a product of Hyperion he was too defective to be sold._

He dug his nails in the widest cut and pulled it further apart to make sure everyone knew he wasn’t fit for purpose; like gutting a faulty computer or crushing make-up in its case.

IT’D BEEN NO-ONE! WASTE THIS BODY ON DEATH? NO! LIVE! BE ALIVE! FEEL ALIVE! CARELESS LITTLE MAN, LITTLE SHEEP, LITTLE LAMB; WANDERED INTO THE WOLF’S DEN AND ALMOST GOT EATEN. PUT ON THE WOLF’S CLOTHING AND BLEND WITH THE PACK AND DEVOUR THEM IN THEIR SLEEP. WORRY ABOUT APPEARANCES WHEN THE SLAUGHTER IS OVER. IT’S NEVER OVER! THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF WOLVES! CRY MORE, LITTLE LAMB. BAA YOUR HEART OUT.

Gouge the rest open too. Rearrange the face so no-one can look, not ever, never never. Ooze purple blood into the bowl, blot out the water, the water wasn’t doing much anyway. How terrified had she been when she saw a few drops of it? She’d be sick to her stomach to see this!

If she saw this.

YOU SCARED HER.

_You scared her._

They both scared her. She’d leave them here to rot. The bots used their product number. Wouldn’t be brought food, couldn’t have a blanket. A forcefield wavered at the mouth of the makeshift cave. Skag cries and the unfamiliar caterwauls of lunar-terrors filled the larger room. _Like the WEP._ LIKE THE WEP. No no no they couldn’t be there. This was Helios. The WEP was half a continent East.

WHERE’S OUR AXE?

_Where’re our guns?_

Where’s Maya? It’s getting cold.

☄️☄️☄️

Since she’d done her loop of the floor — to the lifts chasing him, and back around to the apartments to collect their belongings — the computer system had gone into hibernation, and the monitors were dark. The LEDs on the harddrives blinked at regular intervals and caught the pile of glass shards on the floor. The axe had lodged deep in the wiring of the central monitor and remained stuck, horizontal, through the plastic.

Reluctant to electrocute herself she used a Phaselock to draw it out, the blade wobbling in its setting as it pinged into the vortex. The edges were dull. He’d want to fit a new one when she returned it.

Catching the handle and disengaging the Lock she let her arm fall to her side, where she hooked the axe on her belt. This was all she needed from the server room but she couldn’t bring herself to leave yet. The digital library called to her, as libraries tended to do; dozens of unwatched videos stocked within reach, on a subject she deeply cared about. He’d been unhappy to see them but he’d not had any specific issues with their existence or her viewing them. That he’d mentioned. Which probably meant it was okay to keep the rest?

There was a set of plain white USBs stuck into the front of the central harddrive. She moved the mouse and blinded herself with the light of the beach background. Duplicating the files into all the USBs she took the topmost from its slot. It was heavier than she’d expected, as she rolled it into her palm.

She stared at it. Brittle piece of metal and plastic. She’d returned to the room for his mask and axe, hadn’t she? To help him. Not for this. Reassure yourself, Maya, that you’d never pick knowledge over a friend’s safety.

Except — she had. She picked a lot over her friends. People in general. She’d become addicted to the idea that she could work alone, fight alone, live alone; so afraid of finding herself under the boot of another Brother Sophis that she refused to acknowledge the advice or needs of anyone around her. Follow her whims! Take whatever, go wherever! Continue the adventure! The rest of the team were doing honest reflection on what was best for them in the future while she collected ECHO recordings and undertook fetch quests for planets she’d spent less than twelve hours on. It wasn’t about having fun. Her life was nothing but avoidance: who would she be when she finished the hunt and picked a homeland and ended this several-years-extended holiday?

She didn’t want to be anything. It was too risky. Whatever the answer was there was the chance it’d consume her the way The Siren had consumed Maya within The Order. If she let Krieg love her like he obviously wanted to she might get stuck as an interpreter, a mediator, a peacemaker; the midpoint between him and the world rather than a distinct individual. Take work from the others, like Zer0’s offered assassination contracts, and she was their assistant. It felt like disappearing into the swamp was the best solution, or stashing herself in the secret rooms of a crashed space station to wait out the years on her own terms.

If she wasn’t a singular hero, what else could she be and still be herself?

… of course, the longer she spent here, the more she wasted an opportunity for an actual act of heroism. No, that was too generous. An act of basic decency. Bailing a friend out of trouble she was largely responsible for. Oops.

Don’t hide from him. Don’t abandon him. Don’t pretend he isn’t part of who you’ve become. There’s a million shades of nuance between being yourself and being someone else’s shadow. Not together or apart, in love or alone. It was possible to be close without being inseparable. She could call sometimes. She should call sometimes.

The axe was so heavy it tugged her belt sideways and made the hip of her pants sit unevenly. She hadn’t grabbed the mask yet. Stooping, she inspected the floor, where the light from the screen wasn’t quite reaching, and searched the debris.

His mask had split when it hit the ground. A crack ran from the forehead, around the right of the main filter, and to the chin. It hadn’t fallen apart completely but it’d need repairs to be wearable and if he used it for medical reasons (she’d heard him wheezing at night, in winter, around flowers in bloom) he’d need a total replacement. He had a few spare at The Backburner but this was his favourite. The others were half-masks or purely decorative. Nothing combined face-covering-form and air-filtering-function like this. The least she could do was bring the remains for him to make a decision about.

She tucked them in her storage deck. They’d be a pain to carry if she didn’t deconstruct them, and they didn’t offer her any comfort or satisfaction like the axe did. Mm. She got why he carried the axe.

Reluctantly but assuredly she added the USB to the storage deck too. Safer there. Didn’t want it corrupted by any Hyperion tech she’d encounter on the way to the labs. If she was good and resisted her curiosity she could find the Samuels and give them the evidence in case they’d lost their copy, like the rest of their belongings. If she was bad… she might be bad. Probably was. She could think it over while she saved him.

Turning a tight circle she walked to the ladder, and began her ascent. Central lifts. Floor 47. Research and Development.

🔪🔪🔪

The sounds got worse the longer they lay there. Normally it was the two of them in angry cohabitation; if they stopped yelling at each other, though, the rest of the menagerie came to call instead. These weren’t personalities, couldn’t make themselves audible or control the body. Shades of the WEP, silhouettes of people who hadn’t survived in meat-form. The meat was rancid, the meat was tough, the meat was genetically modified to suit its slaughterhouse-owners: it was meat. The shades wished they were meat.

There were the parents who’d started the riot. The lovers hand-in-hand below the knife. The children, the workers, the groundskeeper who’d been caught throwing pity jerky into cages with subjects too hopeless to take the dinner-slop anymore. Weeks spent rotating through the different departments as their condition deteriorated, reteriorated, exceeded expectations — good boy, gold star, take an axe and give us an anatomy lesson! People identifiable only by their screams.

They covered their head and buried themself in the corner of the cave, panting into the rock as they tried to remember what type of breathing would make this stop. Fast breaths? Slow breaths? In-between breaths? They hyperventilated. Their lungs seared. The mask, they’d dropped their mask, they needed their mask.

Without it the shades got into their ears, held their eye open, pried their lips apart and forced into their mouth:

“She saw who you were, she’s disappointed you let yourself become this.”

_“SHUT UP,”_

“You were part of the staff, you could’ve stopped them, dismantled the place when you realised what it was becoming.”

_“SHUT UP!”_

“This is what you deserve. Rotting in a cell. Like the rest did.”

_“SHUUUT UUUP!!”_

Reeling their head back, they smashed it against the wall, as if the percussive force would ring the shades out of them and leave them to their own quieter kind of guilt. No-one needed to do this to them! They did it to themself! That was why they’d split — _he_ wanted to suffer and die for having failed his purpose, HE wanted to live at the expense of everyone else. They were built for their own eternal torture; the WEP had forged them into an internal torture device; replacing their blood with molten rock was just the special sauce. 

They smashed their head twice. They smashed their head thrice. When they thought they heard the groundskeeper wailing again they gave it a fourth. It hurt so bad but it rang so loud that they got the peace they wanted from it. They curled over and choked on the snot clogging their airways. 

Pain-haze. White behind their eye. Dizziness. A dull whine from their eardrums. Snuffling and shivering. 

With nothing to focus on but the mess they’d made inside their skull they found each other.

_… How d’you think this looks, Big Guy?_

… 

…

… UGLY.

☄️☄️☄️

Maya exited the lift with her SMG in the crook of her arm. She didn’t trust Hyperion labs when they were operational — now? She’d taken a sniper rifle and a pistol from her storage deck and left them hooked either side of her belt to swap at a moment’s notice, balancing out the weight of the axe.

Tucking her newest borrowed security pass into a pouch on her leg, she stepped into the entrance hall of R&D. The area smelled and sounded alive, creatures extending their territory as they realised their habitat wasn’t as regulated as it’d once been. Experiments were being undertaken without controls: animals hybridising against what any Punnett square would’ve thought possible, plants pushing into ventilation ducts on a multi-year campaign in search of fresh carbon dioxide, leaks sprung from pipes and chemicals dumped from vats. Why a weapon manufacturer had ever needed any of it she loathed to think.

She slunk along the hall, already fighting the urge to take the axe and brandish it at thin air. There was a definite appeal to Krieg’s approach; less of the subtleties of a gun, more adrenaline and immediacy. Problem appears, whack it, problem disappears. This place had a lot of problems and a single axe could deal with many of them. 

Movement to her right!

She yanked the axe from her hip and brandished it at the lurking figure. “AHHH!” she yelled, flexing her muscles much less impressively than he would’ve managed.

A funny little feathered creature waddled from the shadows. It was round and soft but for its sharp claws and jagged jaws. “Hhhhhhhhhh!” it replied, spittle flicking onto her from its toothy wee mouth.

She waved the axe in front of it.

It flapped its wing-like forelimbs in her direction.

Rather than escalate the situation, they reversed away from each other, flapping and waving and spitting and flexing, until there was enough distance between them to continue about their business in a safe and respectful manner. The creature tippity-tapped its tiny claws into its nest behind a broken skirting panel as Maya passed a (refreshingly analogue) sign indicating the old bounds of the zoology department.

Sweeping aside a drape of overgrown vines, she entered a large, green chamber. Unlike in the preceding rooms the soil beneath her feet went deep. This wasn’t a veneer of nature laid out like a rug over ugly rental carpet; this chamber was where the experiments started, the origin of Hyperion’s homebrew ecosystem. Rock walls, spiderant nests, stagnant lakes long disconnected from the mains. Above them was a giant, shattered window that left the chamber exposed to the elements. The night beyond was dark and starless.

As unintuitive as Helios’ architecture was, it had at least been designed by someone. This was the mess of life; it made sense to its inhabitants, who’d fought and wrought and carved it to their needs, but the logic of the space seemed poor-to-non-existent to anyone who wasn’t there at the time. 

Overwhelmed by the entrance alone Maya crouched by a rock, makeshift cover, and took a deep breath. 

A bot had mistaken Krieg for an experiment (... technically not a mistake) and taken him here — where would it have filed him? There was a sign advertising native fauna research above her, another on the other side of the chamber mentioning aquatic species — he wasn’t from Pandora based on his behaviour in the videos, and he wasn’t aquatic (that she knew of). He didn’t belong in either genus. Where’d they put the rest?

Out of the corner of her eye — tucked most of the way behind a rock — a flash of purple took her attention like an underwhelming-but-still-unexpected fireworks display. _Eridium._ Half the planet was irradiated and a purple glow didn’t mean a lot but it was a clue.

Inspired, she leapt from the entrance outcrop and onto the ground in pursuit of the flash. 

The terrain began firm, then soft, then unstable, then roiled furiously below her pounding feet. Shaken apart by another force from below it opened around her in several perfect holes, through which a posse of threshers emerged. They batted their appendages about. The balance had been disturbed! The delicate equilibrium unceremoniously smashed! Would she answer for her transgressions?

With fresh confidence she swung the axe.

🔪🔪🔪

They turned around and sat with their legs extended in front of them. The wide, wide wounds across their face oozed every possible liquid. The excitement had pumped some warmth into their chest again. They laid their hands upon their thighs and stared at the forcefield over the mouth of the cave.

WHY THE BEEF, LITTLE MAN?

Unwinding the bandages from their right arm, they took them and they pressed them to their elsewhere-wounds, leaving the forever-tracks on their forearm dryly exposed. It wasn’t important tonight. 

_Remember when we got out? The world was huge. We ran and ran until we reached the desert where we thought no-one’d ever find us. Except. We found each other._

SCHISM.

_It took a while to come around. When I did and I saw what you’d done I didn’t even want to admit I was here._

NOT THE PRETTIEST YOURSELF.

A broken pipe overhead had left a puddle on the floor. There wasn’t as much water as there’d been in the bowl, but they crawled to it and splashed some over their face, washing off the smeared trail the bandages had left behind. The remainder of the puddle turned ruddy purple. They sat watching it in case it cleared.

_No. I’m not. I’m dealing with it._

As the slag settled, it sank, solidifying into drops of Eridium without their warm veins to liquify it. The water wasn’t clear enough to let them see an accurate reflection but they saw the shape of themself. Their silhouette was the same as ever.

_Could we deal with it together? Try and come to an understanding._

PRETTY LADY MEDIATES —

_There was that explosion at the WEP, the day we got out. Tina did that. Didn’t need to stop and ask her for directions, though. She just gave us the opportunity._

The image clarified, and the voice said through his mouth: “we’re our own responsibility.”

Irritated at the loss of control but willing to accept it under the circumstances, he followed with a quiet growl, like an animal having a splinter removed. He stared at the blur in the pool. It was their mess. They owned it, they'd fix it. "Not leaving with her?" he asked, wary of the voice's sudden change of heart. It had shared his feelings for the last few minutes but it liked to deny when that happened so it might not mean anything going forward. 

_Much as I complain about people underestimating us, I do it too. This is a project we can finish on our own._

"The cheerleaders don't decide the game."

 _Sorry for saying otherwise._ It huffed and scratched his head as it realised what it'd done. _Don't think we're best friends because we're cooperating or because I apologised. I still want you gone. I just —_ It tipped his brain around, a boat at sea, buoyed in sloshing skull fluids. He wobbled. _If you're not leaving, can't hurt us to communicate._

"Hah," he said, "growing on you, admit it." He prodded both his cheeks and grinned at the pool. A finger went in a gash and that hurt but that didn't stop him. "Mould. Cancer. Fungus. Parasite. Cordyceps! Open your eyes to the sun, let the birds feast, complete the cycle!"

The voice forced him to take the finger out of the wound. _We literally just cleaned that, don't reopen it._ It gripped his chin thoughtfully. _Speaking of the sun, should we try getting out of here? Forcefield's probably electrified but —_

"Punch it! Drink the pain! Siphon the juice into another, bigger punch!"

_Release the beast. Okay, Big Guy. Anger can be productive — let's use it._

☄️☄️☄️

As Maya decapitated the last of the larger threshers, there was a familiar scream from the adjoining chamber. She smiled and let out her own in response, holding the axe aloft in her right hand and the leftover ripple of a Phaselock in her left.

The smaller threshers, splashed with the ichorous blood of their kin, warbled a surrender and disappeared into the ground from whence they came. Around her periphery a pack of skags and a pair of the funny feathered creatures retreated into their own burrows. The chamber gave its best impression of being empty in the hope she'd leave it to its questionable devices.

Lucky for everyone, she was defending herself same as they were, and in this instance she was happy to call a truce. She had bigger, beefier, leggier fish to fry. Putting away her weapons she strode purposefully between two of the outcrops, along through a rock corridor, in the direction of Krieg's warcry.

The adjoining chamber was tall, taller than she'd thought any single level of Helios could be, with faux-organic stairways cut in the rock face from the ground to the (jarringly urban) ceiling. Separated into uneven levels, it was lined with tiny caves; some sealed with a forcefield, others not. The sealed caves contained the unidentifiable carcasses of unfinished experiments, while some braver living animals had settled in the unsealed inlets. At the top of the chamber was the only sealed cave with any motion — a giant fist, banging repeatedly on the forcefield, knuckles horribly blistered from the effort.

Sprinting around the stairways, criss-crossing the chamber and dead-ending and doubling back through scattershot intersections, she ascended. Along the way she checked the walls for the forcefield controls but there didn't seem to be any local panels. Stupid remote security. Stupid Helios. Stupid Hyperion. The final branch she chose stopped a few meters from Krieg's cave and, too frustrated to figure out the correct sequence, she took a wild leap over the gap. Barely catching herself, she hoisted her lower body up with enough grunts that he had to have heard her.

And there he was. He'd caught his latest punch midway, and as he looked at her, the grotesque swelling in his arm depressurized, its distended veins sinking and recirculating misplaced fluids into the rest of his system. With a limited amount of forethought he put his now-normal hand to the forcefield and burnt the palm. He winced, "pretty lady."

She nodded, double-checking the entrance for a way to disable it. "Krieg," she said, "I need you to check that side for a switch. There's gotta be an out."

"Punching," he said matter-of-factly, clenching his burnt hand and full-body-cringe regretting it.

"I've got your axe. Mask’s broken." She held it out for him, though she couldn't pass it through. "What happened in the server room…”

He turned from her, eye lowered, and his hands went slack again. His shoulders drooped, perpetual tension gone, perpetual motion stalled. He let out a sigh like an old exhaust pipe. “Him? He’s here,” he said, “he talks. Don’t like him. Saw why, pretty lady? Bad at this. Loser.” He shook his head. “Not gone but forgotten.”

Though his face had been through so much, there was still a wounded, soulful look in his eye, the kind he’d worn in the past with his fitted shirt and precise haircut; someone with a vulnerable heart clad in less tender flesh. No, that man wasn’t gone — divided, yes, quartered, butchered into saleable cuts — but he was there even on the outside, regardless of whether he recognised it. Krieg hadn’t come from nowhere.

She reached her free hand toward his face until the forcefield singed the fine hairs from her fingers. “I know he is.” 

“Do you —” he struggled with his next words “— want him? In space?”

That seemed like a loaded question. “You’re part of each other.”

“Krieg,” he said.

“Whatever you agree on, if it’s healthy for the whole of Krieg, I support it.”

“... Can’t decide yet.”

“For the moment, then, let’s get you out of there.” 

Keeping her hand outstretched, though not extending any further, she twisted it around. A tiny hole tore in the forcefield, an unusually flat disc-shaped Lock, and as she adjusted the angle of her hand like the dial on a radio it grew wider. Bright blue sparks struck and rebounded from the edges. If he couldn’t break it, she’d bypass it, warp the section of space-time Hyperion’d put between them and ignore the barrier entirely. “Come on,” she said.

He hesitated, nursing his burnt hand and staring at her. Then he realised: whether it worked or not, she’d found an out, and it was up to him to take it. He crouched and with a loud “HUP” he rubber-banded through the gap.

This proved to be a terrible idea as he flew out the other side with surplus momentum and knocked her off-balance, across the walkway.

To the edge of the walkway. 

Panicking, he looped an arm around her waist, while she summoned her underused, almost vestigial Siren wings to catch them before they fell. He skidded his feet to a stop along the rock and she braked against the air. They came to a halt less than a foot clear of the drop. 

She kept her wings open. 

He held onto her. 

Breathless, their minds reached their bodies, and they each let out a terrified laugh. Falling over onto the walkway proper, the laughter continued, as they elbowed and play-slapped and cast nervous glances over the edge at the mishap they’d narrowly avoided. 

Maya banished her wings and grabbed Krieg’s knee. “That was _not_ what I meant and you know it,” she huffed.

“Like a waterslide — facefirst into the hole, sue the engineers if there’s damage!”

“What kind of waterslides’ve you been on, that that’s safe?”

“Slide down the throat into the lazy laryngeal river!”

“That’d do it,” she said, “lazy rivers can be dangerous, though, and so can Phaselocks — I don’t know how they'll spit you out, not for sure."

He gaped at her. With his face exposed, she could see the little expressions that went with his wilder statements, and they were consistently adorable. "Into the abyss?”

“Or into a wall. Who can say?”

They rested there a moment longer, until the wheels and gears in his head turned anew. He rolled onto his feet and offered to help her follow. “Any abyss if Maya’s there.”

She flinched. Her name. He knew it, of course, he had to when everyone else used it so often — but she hardly ever heard him say it. As the surprise wore off, the numbness relinquishing her skin, she took his hand and let him haul her up. "Thanks. Bad for our health, though, so I'll try not to fall in any." 

It'd be a bit of a walk to reach the ground. Both of them were in decent condition, Krieg's face and knuckles notwithstanding, but they'd done a lot today without any real rest. Then there was the fact they'd finally, inadvertently, found R&D together. Leaving here without the pool cleaner was a waste and she didn't have the energy to look for it tonight. Which meant maybe — maybe it’d be best for them to stay here until morning? If he was comfortable with that, given what’d happened.

“Hey,” she said, “I’m pretty tired, and there’s a lot of empty caves in here; think we should —?”

Without her finishing, without asking any questions, without a single solicitation for more information, he lead her along the path to a trio of caves, just below the topmost tier. Pointing at them as he silently evaluated their relative merits he picked the leftmost and moved to the side of its mouth, gesturing her in like a waiter to a table.

Unlike the other caves it didn’t have any leaks or animal droppings. The ground was dry and almost flat, so they could lie without any uncomfortable juts or lumps in their backs. She entered and surveyed it for the clearest stretch of ground, removing her weapons and either dropping them in a nook to the side or stashing them in her storage deck as she went. Each clattered and echoed; a small echo in the cave, a larger, later echo in the chamber as a whole. If this were a natural rock formation it’d be in her top five freedom camping experiences on Pandora: cool, clean, and no sign of anything inclined to eat them. 

He stepped past her and, before she could call dibs, took the spot she’d been eyeing. He lay flat across the floor, his seven-some feet barely fitting between the walls, and put his arms behind his head as a makeshift pillow. Then, without even turning to notice the annoyed look on her face, he patted his waist. “Abs softer than rock.”

Her mouth redressing into the slightest smile, she settled perpendicular to him, and placed her head and shoulders on his side, accepting the offer. Not much softer than rock — to his credit in most situations, if not here — but it’d do the trick. She folded her hands over her stomach and gazed at the ceiling. “Thanks. For this, and for letting us finish what we came for.”

“Otherwise the funride ends faster,” he said, almost ruefully; a complex emotion for him.

Though the tiredness had taken a lot out of her, some anxiety lingered beyond its reach, and the absence of other feelings made it increasingly noticeable. She gestured her head at the nook where she’d left her equipment. “Your mask’s in the storage deck, whenever you want access, but it split in half.”

He followed her gaze. “Ughhh.”

“Was it the video that made you angry? Or me watching?”

His face moved through configurations that must’ve aggravated his damaged skin. Some of the cuts welled fresh blood as they stretched apart. The emotions could’ve belonged to either Krieg; brows dipped in thought, mouth tilting in disappointment. Wrinkles and wounds at odds. He settled on a weak, frustrated pout. “Why not both?”

“I kept the files. There was a note. The Samuels want to take Hyperion to court on your behalf. If they’re alive they need the eviden —”

“To see the voice made flesh.”

No. Yes. Maybe. 75%. “Is he listening at the moment?”

Silence. Krieg turned away from her so all she could see was a shoulder, an ear, and the back of his head. 

“Sorry. I want to talk to you too. The last few years, though, it seemed as if there was someone else — in the quiet, or when you took too many bullets and I was patching the wounds. Knowing there was, or is, or might be. Why doesn’t he talk to us?”

“Pandora’s not a planet. A star going supernova. Fwoosh. Someone has to ride the solar explosion. In a million years the debris might be habitable. Until then. A rocket man! Rocket maaan.”

“Okay,” she said, “I think I understand.”

He turned to face her again, his expression softer. “Blue comet: when you launch into the universe, what kind of trail will you leave behind? Will your echoes reach us? Is our carbon part of your deep-fried ice-cream layers?” He leaned as far around as he could without her sliding off his stomach. “The light descends so slowly. Briefly. Every few years. Comets have to fly but they could make themselves visible at a distance.” There was an urgency in his eye. “Please let us see.”

A lump rose in her throat. He always asked her the scariest questions. “If I do, can you promise not to get angry? I kept thinking I should call but I didn’t have anything to talk about. Except about being a failure who apparently went to the other side of the galaxy to drink and try a bunch of hiking trails. So it was easier to keep quiet and hope some actual news came around.”

“Whatever’s healthy for the whole Maya.” Her name twice in an evening. He pressed his forehead to her scalp. His back clicked from how he had to contort to reach.

She’d never say it if she didn’t say it now. “Hey —” Within seconds she’d probably regret saying it. It’d be misinterpreted. Or would it? She wasn’t sure how she was about to mean it. There were so many meanings and at least one of them was true but she couldn’t say which, or whether the man in the video complicated it or made it easier. “ — I love you, and I want you to find yourself, whether I’m here and able to help or not.”

He stopped breathing. His stomach, which had been rising and falling steadily with a series of deep, consistent breaths, hitched at its highest point. Then a tiny gasp of air released; a shudder sent through him like a gas pump.

“I believe in you.”

Reaching to her shoulder, he held it loosely, in a gentle attempt at reassurance.

They rested in that pose together until sleep took them. It wasn’t long. They’d had quite a day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 7... there's still the matter of the pool cleaner


	7. we’re not enemies — if anything, we’re in harmony

Sometime in the night, Maya slid off Krieg and into a tight armadillo-ball at his side, arms around her knees and hair about her face. When they’d met he’d assumed she’d be an earlier riser than him, follow that ascetic principle of greeting the sun as it rose and bidding goodbye with it at sunset, but his nerves were more compelling than the monastery’s ideals and this morning — like most — he was the first awake.

The voice twinged against the elastic coating of their brain as it followed.  _ Shouldn’t we, I dunno, get her another pillow?  _ It asked. 

He plucked at the redistributed bandages around their face and torso and grunted. “A thresher is perfect for neck support. Nothing else in our blast radius.”

It gave a grunt and coiled around its usual nervous rungs of their brain stem.

Who knew when it was, aside from morning? There were no windows in this chamber and the run-around last night had put the three of them outside their intended schedule. It could be a standard 7, a too-late 11, an uncomfortable 3. His biological clock couldn’t be read; it woke him at odd intervals, odd hours, its alarm function broken since their stay at the WEP.

He stretched and exhaled. Limb by limb he tested his muscles. Clenched and relaxed in turn; made sure he hadn’t damaged anything else during his fit in the cage, or when he smashed the monitors, or or or. The instances had all been justified but he’d destroyed a lot of stuff yesterday. He felt — ashamed? Usually the voice provided enough shame for both of them but this was that rare occasion where he made his own. “Promised to be gentle,” he said, extending his fingers to examine his raw knuckles, “yes, gentle as a rodeo-bull in a matador’s china shop.”

The voice stirred from its rest.  _ We were triggered. It’s fine.  _ Genuine — reluctant — forgiveness. Instead of ashamed, it sounded… regretful. And where shame had an angry element he could slam headfirst into, regret didn’t. The internalised version of ‘not mad, just disappointed’.  _ It wouldn’t change anything anyway. _

“Aren’t we fine with that, too?”

_ I don’t know.  _

She was going. They’d finish their mission, and she’d go. He looked at her, with her beautiful eyes lashed closed, tattoos reflecting the ceaseless neon light. Almost aglow. Pretty lady, blue comet, Maya. They’d lied to each other that she wouldn’t but deep in their shared core neither of them believed it.

The voice sighed; seal broken on a carbonated beverage, gush of rueful air, couldn’t keep it in. Climbing up, it took a seat close to him in the tight confines of their prefrontal cortex. “Yesterday — our conversation,” it said, “we can work through this together. That’s a genuine belief.”

“Uhuh? Lots of fake bee leaves.”

“The important part is actually putting in the work. Not sniping at each other and —”

“Sniping’s for Birdman and Mr. Robot. Wouldn’t be caught dead, shot dead with a rifle.”

“— being uncooperative. We’re like an onion.”

“Layers.”

“Yeah. Keep peeling and we’ll reach the centre eventually. Maya’s like a knife. We can open the onion with her or we can use our fingers. If we put the onion on the bench it stays as-is. It sucks and it might make us cry but we have to keep peeling.”

“Flay us alive to reach the tasty marrow. Sluuurp.”

“Yeah, Big Guy. I’m gonna flay you.”

“Not if I debone you first, Little Man.”

Taking control of their fist it punched them in the shoulder. “That’s the spirit.” The blisters on their knuckles complained. Raising it to their mouth they pressed the intact half of their lips to it and hoped saliva wasn’t just a curative for cuts. “Can’t believe I’m asking for your opinion, but what’d you think about the whole video situation?”

He rolled his fist around and leaned his cheek against it. “Rude. Don’t like being watched. Careful, somebody could lose an eye.”

The voice used their other hand to tap their empty eye socket. “We did. Genius.”

“Everyone’s a critic!” He slapped it aside.

“It’s fine for her to keep the footage, right? Whether or not she’s serious about passing it on to Sammy.”

Hmm. He looked at the nook where the storage deck’d been stashed. They’d shared supplies over the years and his fingerprints had biometric permissions. If he wanted to take it he could, he could crush it with a single hand, then swallow the remains. Small electronics had a fun crunch to them. Sometimes if they retained a charge they had a tingly aftertaste. A wonderful aperitif. She was uncomfortable with the fact she’d taken it and if he protested, she’d understand. If he wanted to. Did he want to?

“Hurts to look at myself, but, I like the idea of her being able to. Could see why you wouldn’t which is why I asked. Thought we should be on the same page for this since otherwise you’ll eat it while our backs are turned.”

“Who mentioned eating? Too small. Not a meal.”

“You’ve definitely considered eating it.”

“Caught red-handed.”

“Are we in agreement?” The voice extended a hand to offer a truce. This wasn’t a compromise. The deal was to its sole benefit. No real pitch for why he should agree. Terrible bargaining. And it wondered why it’d been hemorrhaging money when it was in control. 

An electric-light montage beamed from their amygdala onto the walls of their visual cortex, of movies and stage shows where lovers parted across oceans and galaxies with nothing of each other but names and photos, to new worlds or distant wars. Photos, always idealistic, men in ironed clothes and women with straight shoulders and inbetween-people laughing at some off-camera joke. Remembering the best of what they’d left behind regardless of whether they’d return to it or if it’d be there when they did.

He didn’t have any photos to offer her. Whatever was left on their old MyFace page would be worse than Sammy’s footage. Film, there was nothing but their parents’ records of their firsts, and a few wedding receptions where the videographer caught them in the background.  _ I have no ring for your finger, I have no banquet table to lay…  _

This was the best they had. It did neither of them justice but it was proof, imperfect as they were, that they existed. At least they smiled in it. Which meant she could keep it. If she wanted to.

“Agreed,” he growled.

“Thanks,” said the voice, and it left him with a smug little smile, a familiar little smile, as it slunk back into the gloomier part of their mind.

Before he could shout an insult at its retreating form, a warm body touched his hip, jolting him from his shared thoughts into his shared physical space. He curled away from her on instinct like a sea creature that’d been poked with a stick. Let her have as much of the cave as she needs. Don’t cause any discomfort. Shh. Sleeping beauty.

Too late. She stirred. Unfurling tattooed limbs she yawned and rolled over. “What time is it, Krieg?” She asked.

His back arched along the contour of the cave, pressed as close to the wall as he could be. “No sun, no moon, no clue!” He shook his head. He’d spoiled her sleep! Bad of him. Be good.

“Ugh.” Not a noise he wanted to hear. She checked her ECHO device and frowned. “6am. Yikes. Definitely not a full 8 hours.” She shut her eyes as if that’d knock her out again. Yes, she was upset. Upset with him? He should’ve found a pillow for her.

“Flay a bully for a cosy bed,” he mused aloud.

“Didn’t see any bullymongs coming in. Besides, flaying them would get the fur wet,” she said. She reopened her reluctant eyes. “It’s fine. It’s fine! We’ll sleep at The Backburner.”

Home? They hadn’t completed the mission yet! What happened to the robot? He lurched closer to her. “Job to do. Kill the alligator. Rumba Roomba.” 

She blinked, eyes out of sync, non-functionally tired. Cute. “Is that smart?” 

“Too close to the jaws to keep every finger. May as well punch them.”

“It was a stupid assignment. My stupid assignment. What do you care whether it’s completed?”

“I —!” Spend an extra day with her. Pretend he didn’t panic and ruin their last attempt. Remind her he was a hero too. “Don’t wanna head home yet.”

At last she sat, tightening her core and levering herself straight up from her hips. She dangled her arms and drummed a rhythm on the rocky ground. Half a song played out before she spoke: “... guess that’s enough of a reason.”

Oh. Oh, they were doing this. Oh. He wobbled onto his feet and nearly hit his head on an uneven section of ceiling. Ducking around it he stooped and offered her his less damaged hand. “Want breakfast?”

Expression out-of-focus she accepted. “If there’s anything digestible.”

“Hotcakes in my storage deck.”

“Wh —“ That got her attention. “From the other morning?”

“Not so hot. But: cake.”

Yeah. That woke her.

☄️☄️☄️

On count of three, they took a running leap from the walkway, and she hooked her arms under his, slowing their descent as her wings rushed from her back. They weren’t the reliable brake she’d expected and the pair of them dropped fast — but landed loud and intact on aching legs at the bottom. Several startled skags jolted from the cave. 

He shook himself out and brandished his axe against the path ahead of them. “Yes! The butcher will have his cuts!” He called along the tree-lined faux-rock corridor.

She pressed past him, giving his shoulder a tap. “The robotics department was nearer to the entrance.”

Whether he followed or not she was keen to finish this ASAP. Increasing her speed to a jog she retraced her steps from the night before, threatening any leering eyes in the bushes with a glowing fist. The trail wound into the open area where she’d fought the worms; still pocked with massive holes. From there she skirted the artificial lake and lead them toward the entrance halls. Those funny feathered creatures cooed in the vents, their ribbed throats texturing the otherwise innocuous sound with a certain level of foreboding. They’d been cute but they must’ve had a nasty bite.

If it hadn’t been for the heavy metal of his footsteps she would’ve thought she’d lost Krieg in the zoology labs. He echoed out of sight behind her, a few turns out of step from whichever stretch she entered. This morning he’d been quiet. Happier than yesterday, if she had to describe his mood, albeit lost in his own thoughts. Not that many of them got voiced. While she was still half-asleep she’d heard… who knew what she’d heard? An argument about flaying himself, deboning himself. The usual violence. Tender and tempered with an unusual tone. Like acceptance. 

Dawn did that to people. A liminal period. Excellent for meditation. The monks had recommended she wake early and use the opportunity to clear her mind and recentre as often as possible. Maybe if she’d followed their advice she’d have a stronger sense of direction now. 

Slow. She took the rough, reclaimed terrain of the hallway step by step. Focusing on her breathing she constructed a pattern between the rise of her chest and the fall of her feet. On and on. Where to? Where next, Maya?

Get the robot or its schematics. Go to Eden-6. Trade for the map. Open another vault? Alone? Or, what if the old local was lying, and the whole errand was a trick they were playing on her? The thought had simmered since she’d been given the task but she’d kept it from the front of her mind until this moment. Because? Because she — 

Had wanted to come here, and wanted to feel useful to the cause. 

Do or die.

He reached her side and tapped her shoulder. “Almost,” he said.

“Yeah. Almost.”

They reached the crossroads between departments; zoology, robotics, some smaller functions like healthcare and — conferencing technology? Either it was a lucrative market, or Jack’d been looking for a euphemistic description for research into methods for remotely murdering C-suite. The other wings weren’t so dilapidated as zoology, but metal aged less gracefully than stone, and whatever alloy they’d picked for the panelling had warped and cracked from the impact of re-entry. 

Of course they were headed into robotics. However intriguing the conferencing section was. Robotics was important. Ignore your curiosity. Come on.

Continuing in the correct direction and not towards conferencing regardless of how much she wanted to know what was inside, they passed beneath another blank signboard and into a large block with glass-walled rooms spaced throughout. 

Each room had either a set of toppled furniture (unstuck post-it boards, standing desks lying down, shattered monitors) or a project at some stage of prototyping. Most of the robots — such as they were, a few were still glorified piles of cable — were disabled, power long since cut and batteries years dead. A scant few blooped and flashed, turning their lenses around as they sat on their docking stations like abandoned birds in a nest. None of them were immediately identifiable as aquatic patrol bots.

Krieg advanced, axe dangling loosely from his fingertips. His upper body lolled about, twisting this way and that, following his gaze with lazy interest. Since leaving the zoology department he’d eased back into his standard mood — a kind of relaxed aggression, a guard dog off-duty. She wasn’t sure if it was fair to call him that, the dog metaphors felt like the kind of self-deprecating joke he’d rather keep to himself, but it was hard not to think of them in moments like this where he wandered about in fragile, aimless calm.

They noticed the bot at around the same time: in a distant corner of the lab, still guarded and faintly warped by several glass rooms between them, but sat high and clear on a pedestal. Yeah: a big, flat, round bot with flippers draped off four opposing points on its chassis. There weren’t any active lights on its shell but it had a charging station and peripherals nearby — plug and play as soon as they found a functional socket. If it turned out to be incomplete there was documentation on the table too. The whole set ready for the taking.

He set the pace, scrambling ahead, and she followed in a burst of blue energy. Whether or not she could trade later on, they weren’t leaving empty handed. Sweet mercy _.  _ Once or twice they nearly collided with the glass project rooms, which the cleaning staff kept so clear it was difficult to notice them without touching them. It was a near-invisible maze and their navigational tactics were haphazard at best.

On the final corner a suspicious red light glinted ahead and in a cautionary panic she lurched forward to grab his shoulder. 

Pulling him back, he slipped on the polished floor, and almost fell on her.

Embedded in the walls either side of the pool cleaner room were lenses — like the kind set in Loaders or the eye of a Constructor — still running on full power, bright and blinding in the dim labs, with seams cut through the panels around them. 

She crouched beside Krieg and pointed at the seam. “Some kind of security. Looks as if it’s active.”

Heaving air in-and-out with a rough mix of surprise and adrenaline he stared where she was indicating. He tilted his head around. “Wash down the rivets with oil and grease. A delicious buffet.” Sure in his target but not in their plan, he looked to her. “Together?” He asked.

“Of course.”

Stepping into the junction where the lenses were set, each rotated frantically, setting its focus on one of the pair. It took several seconds of whirring and grinding for them to shift into place; the central light constricted below a tightly wound shutter. A tense silence followed.

Then a roar, as huge unseen machinery cranked about behind the walls, a great quake that wobbled all the glass in this corner of the hall and would’ve been liable to shatter it if — Maya reminded herself, mildly impressed — the pane hadn’t been fired flexible enough to survive the greater shock of reentry. The panels around the lenses rearranged themselves like puzzle pieces. They slotted into new and unlikely configurations. A section at a time. Building, building.

Until the arrangement made sense; there were never walls here, just concealed corridors leading into the broader mechanical engineering department. Huge, yellow-and-white bipedal robots stood in front of them holding batons and riot shields pulled from the station framework. Robots designed to imitate walls, hide important passages, and provide security — three functions in a single oversized machine.

“Huh. Mimics,” she said, fixing her fringe and drawing her SMG from her storage deck. “Should tell Lilith about this later.” She gestured at the robot on the left: they’d focus there to start with.

“Souvenirs from the trip?” He asked, shifting his footing to face it.

“Sure. We’ll take an arm or two home for Ellie.”

A major design flaw Hyperion hadn’t managed to correct was the fact that robots built to mimic a wall would need to be the same size as the hall they were installed in. The way they’d reconfigured meant they stood with a slight gap around their head and shoulders, but any movement up or out would either damage their surroundings, or get them stuck. 

Maya preyed on that weakness like a lioness on the hunt. Running at the left robot, she dropped onto her knees and slid through the narrow opening between its leg and the wall it’d shucked itself from. Bouncing to her feet on the other side she fired a short burst into its shoulder blade. 

Most of its casing was on its front and the bullets punched through several exposed wires, drawing its attention immediately. It turned its head, but it’d take some work to bring the rest of its body around. Its lone eye shrank further to a sore red pinprick.

Swapping to corrosive ammunition, she took a few shots at another exposed patch on the underside of its arm. Didn’t seem to like that either. “Turn around, bright eye,” she taunted, juggling her weight side-to-side as she waited.

She couldn’t see past its mass but she could hear the rickety-clang of a serrated blade on flat steel. Krieg kept the other bot at bay — but she’d need his help to pull this manoeuvre off. 

Her robot had turned three-quarters of its body around but its other shoulder lagged. The drone of its components pitched higher. It was like a hornets nest shoved in a metal chassis.

“Hey! Soft stuff for your axe!” She yelled over the noise and the mass of metal between them.

His next parry came with its own awful buzz as he activated his saw. A scream as his blade ran sparks against his opponent’s baton. Then a ground-shaking CLONG as part of it cut free and hit the floor. “Yes! Of course! Everything for the axe! The greatest buffet, a conciliatory feast from our friends at head office! Sorry for delaying your flight!” 

As her robot finished its turn and prepared to hit her with its own baton, there was a sound like torn muscle, and its whole body went rigid, then limp, then fell in a concertina at every joint until it was on its knees.

Maya retreated as it finished its journey to the floor.

Krieg stood with his feet in the square of its back, tugging on his axe, embedded in the nape of its squat, broken neck. The bandages he wore in lieu of his mask exposed a good chunk of his face — showcased his steady, focused smile as he wrestled with the vine-like cables that’d trapped the blade. The mania in his voice belied a certain calm; this was the work he’d been created for and though the ‘Little Man’ seemed to dislike the Big Guy’s brutality, the death and bloodshed of vault hunting was rote for both of them. Weapon stuck in the kill? Happens to the best of us. Find the right angle to remove it and return to the task at hand.

She appreciated it even though she knew the deeper parts of him didn’t. Thumbs up! Stepping around the shoulders of the flattened robot she took a look at the remaining foe.

It loomed behind Krieg, shuffling along the corridor and calculating how close it needed to be to wield its half-baton, what arc it could swing along without hitting the ceiling. Its eye burned hotter in its casing. Hyperion hadn’t installed a mouth or speakers so it was impossible to know how advanced the AI inside was but they loved cursing their products with unnecessary intelligence; it seemed angry.

He groaned as he pulled the axe free with a tangle of copper and fibre optics ensnaring its teeth. Staggering around in the fallen robot’s messy back cavity he considered the twin. “Metal won’t burn,” he said, “rubber won’t burn, glass won’t burn. Nothing but the axe for them.” He buried his face in his hands, mock-weeping. “What is war without fire, without blood?”

“It’s okay, we’ll find somewhere else to commit arson,” she reassured him.

Lurching into the air he brought the axe down on the bot’s faceplate with two hundred pounds of force. But the blow didn’t even crack the panels. “Hhh?” He gurgled.

Recognising the opportunity the bot swung its baton and cracked into his ribs.

He flew sideways into the innards of the exposed wall the bots had emerged from. Insulation foam and wiring caught him. The coarse pink fibreglass scratched his exposed skin and the electricals sparked. He seized as the current ran through him.

Step it up, Maya. She stuck out her right arm and summoned a Phaselock to collapse the bot’s core, but it was too heavy, and the most she could manage was sticking it in place like a magnet. 

Its manoeuvrability further compromised, the bot dropped the shield and clenched its freed fist. Rotating in place toward stunned Krieg, it withdrew its baton for an additional strike. It stuck the halved, sharpened baton straight through his stomach.

Blood pulsed through him into his uncovered mouth, and over his lip in a short, thick wave. “Out,” he gulped, “out, out, out!” The current was still active. An electrical burn puffed across his hips and shoulders.

Deactivating her useless Phaselock on the bot, Maya swapped it for a defensive lock on Krieg — she grabbed him in a vortex and yanked him out of the wall just as the bot made a third jab at him. Unable to change Krieg’s trajectory after her initial move she winced as she sent him crashing into the opposite wall. Small mercy: a sealed section. 

Both of them out of the bot’s reach and separated from it by its companion’s body she took a knee beside him. “Healing — I’ll heal you,” she said, extending her still-bright tattooed hand.

He shook from the waning current inside him. “Idea.” His teeth chattered. “Redirect the lightning. Strike harder. Strike larger.” His pupils were uneven. His torso was too. Veins formed across his side in a messy tripartite pattern with his blistering burns and existing scars. Bloody teeth formed an eager grin. Take damage, return double. Rampage. Let him go.

The bot couldn’t figure out how to reach them.

Instead of curative energy, she prepared another slingshot. “Yeah. Okay.”

Together they launched over and into the bot at full force. 

Arm swollen and traced with purple veins, he swung his fist. 

Maya fired a single corrosive shot at its chest as it recoiled in surprise. 

Krieg landed a blow on the brittle surface it left behind. The casing across its torso cracked apart like an egg hit with the back of a spoon. 

Landing off-kilter on the same tile the pair withdrew their arms and took a second Eridium-powered purple-and-blue punch each. Plunging their arms into the bots core they found its battery, and pulling, they removed it.

Eye extinguished, the bot stopped.

Dropping the battery in unison they stomped it into a hundred shards of lithium-coated plastic.

Dizzy from the carnage Krieg fell in the puddle of acid without a second’s delay. He wasn’t out yet — if he was, the swelling in his arm would’ve subsided, too little energy to maintain it. The particular combination of injuries had thrown him. Splashing meekly and trying to roll out of the fluid he looked to her for help.

She took him by the shoulders and dragged him a few feet clear. Half-intentionally, she staggered off her feet and onto her butt, giddy herself from the drain of three Phaselocks in quick succession. Wasn’t fair that her powers had a limit when Lilith was teleporting halfway around the planet, no big deal — but at least, in situations like this, she had them. Shuffling to sit with him she leaned on Krieg’s side and put a hand to his wound to heal it. “Hard to imagine a fight this messy anywhere else,” she laughed, gesturing towards what she assumed was the sky, though she’d long since acclimatised to the tilted angle Helios had pitched itself at.

He took her hand and removed it from his waist, sputtering out the recovery Phaselock before it could reconnect his intestines. That wasn’t a clever move; he winced. “Wrong. Messy in the stars, if you know where to look.”

A clearer response than you’d expect from a dying man. Normal for Krieg. The less blood and sleep he had the more sense he made. Of course he wanted to leave the wound open. 

This was her chance. “I don’t, though. Are you — sure you won’t show me?”

“Can’t take me anywhere.”

“No, I —“ she clenched her jaw “— no, I want to. Have you seen how many Siren hunters hang around the spaceport bars? People want both of us.”

“Can’t,” he repeated.

“What’s so important about Pandora, huh? Why here? You’re not from here either!”

There was an anxious twitch in his mouth. He clapped his normal hand over his wound and looked askance. His pupil focused, though it could’ve been the shifting light. “We got rid of Jack,” he said, voice smooth, “there was a moment just as we sank the axe in his neck; it’s over, we’re free. Until the afterparty ended and we climbed into bed and found the nightmares had grown up and they could live on their own without him. Sew a cut closed, it’s still a cut, it can be reopened. The healing needs to happen. Sewing’s done, Maya.” There he was, the man from the video. “We need rest and we need time. No room for either off-world.”

Leaning closer she took his hand, laced her fingers in his, and felt at the edges of the hole. His blood was like syrup; the slag mixed through and gave it a sticky and gelatinous consistency. She left fingerprints on the surrounding patch of undamaged skin. “There are lots of uninhabited planets.”

He glanced at her hand. Furrowed his brow at the marks she’d left on him. “Lots of empty caves in the desert.” The stress of his wounds and the use of his powers (such as they were) rapidly consumed the energy he’d so carefully restored overnight. He didn’t make any move to clean himself.

“There’re so many non-cave options.  _ Krieg. _ ”

“A couple extra years on this job. I’m a mercenary. When Big Guy’s contract is done I’m wherever you want.” Slipping his hand free of hers he reached for her face instead, angled for her cheek — fell short — eyes falling closed. “Almost…”

… not yet.

The pool cleaner waited on its pedestal in the room next door. Whether it was worth the hassle or not, it was what they’d come for, and he’d be annoyed if she left it behind. Walking around to the glass wall of the room she kicked in a panel and stepped inside. It scanned into her storage deck without prompting any patent or property theft alerts. Hyperion hadn’t registered the tech yet, it seemed. A true blue R&D find. If the Eden-6 caller didn’t have a vault map they might at least have some appreciation for the item they were being given. Maya could live with the lack of a physical reward provided someone appreciated the effort she’d gone to.

That handled, she returned to Krieg. With a couple of awkward manoeuvres she slung him over her shoulder as he withered to his normal size and shape. The trip to the exit would be difficult however big his arm was. No worry. She’d had some practice. It’d take much longer than seven months to forget how to hold him.

🔪🔪🔪

He awoke with the pool cleaner in his lap and the distinct feeling he’d been  _ used.  _ That sick ache the voice left him with when it puppeteered him into a bad situation. Trusting someone with the keys and having your car returned encrusted with dust and pocked from loose gravel. How far off-road did they take it?  _ Hah. Does Pandora  _ have  _ roads?  _ Get out, you’ve done enough.

Probably the thought’d come into their head because they were driving home. He’d been draped across the bed of the truck where his legs were less of an obstacle. The sun beamed straight onto his shiny, bare head. The desert wind was gritty and tasted horrible in his exposed mouth. He missed his mask.

In the driver’s seat, Maya sat with her eyes diligently focused on the road. One hand on the wheel, the other tapping a rhythm on the cup-holder. Her music was on; a power ballad. If she couldn’t belt the chorus she wouldn’t put it on her playlists. If he’d been more alert he would’ve yelled along.

Noticing movement in the rear view she turned to look at him. She gave a stiff wave before returning her attention to the endless dunes ahead. “There was an oasis a few minutes ago. Thought about pulling over but we’re almost there. Visit tomorrow, maybe.” She hummed a few bars of the verse as she tried to think of something else to talk about. “So, uh, how about that mission, huh?”

Neither he nor the voice knew what to say. They clutched the robot to their chest and lay back. The sun was blinding. He adjusted some of his bandages to cover his eye. Like she’d said. Not far left to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Penultimate chapter!
> 
> I just wanted to shout out nishakadam who some art based on chapter 6 which I’m totally !!! about. If you haven’t seen it you should totally look at it because it is beautiful. <3 Maya <3 https://nishakadam.tumblr.com/post/190299695834/blue-comet-when-you-launch-into-the
> 
> Chapter 8... there’s a gap in the schedule until the next outbound flight


	8. mortifying ordeal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ❌ 👁️

Without his mask, asleep in Moxxi’s unlit guest room (if it still counted as a guest room, how often he took it), he was almost unrecognisable. It was too dark to see his scars and he had a blanket pulled to the top of his chest. It wasn’t long enough to cover his whole body. A big, peaceful mound of synthetic yellow velvet — all rounded shapes and wavering textures like a dry hill in a breeze. Take away the jagged armour, the vivid ridges of eridium damage, the run of saw blades, there was still that relaxed, unintimidating bodyguard beneath, the bedrock of his person. 

Since they’d got back he’d summoned enough strength to get out the truck, in the door, and up the stairs with Maya. He’d collapsed on the landing and she’d carried him along the corridor to bed. His wounds were healing rapidly but the particular combination of hits he’d taken meant it was a multi-step process. Unlike fire, which he’d been built to withstand, electrocution didn’t play with whatever weird biological systems his regenerative powers depended on. It’d probably be a few hours until he was on his feet.

She felt like a creep, watching his face, his nostrils flaring and narrowing with his breath while his eyebrows hinted at a not-so-great dream. But she couldn’t decide what else to do. Leaving him to wake alone some point later that night would be wrong too, probably. She’d never been great at this stuff. The happy median seemed to be loitering at the door, lent awkwardly on the frame. Whenever she moved she’d dig some part of the hinge into her scalp or get her hair caught in the gap. A different kind of uncomfortable.

Bassy music filtered up through the floor. Moxxi’s was popping off. Was that the term? ‘Popping off’? Moxxi’s was lit. Moxxi’s was — ugh, no-one but Gaige would care, and Gaige wasn’t present to judge her for being maybe-outdated. Moxxi’s was busy with a bachelor party on top of the usual crowd. Even if she wasn’t on Krieg-watch Maya wouldn’t have been downstairs. Her thoughts were plenty of company after Helios.

Offworld: attempt 2. Hand over the pool cleaner on Eden-6, investigate the Vault if possible (if real), and then… and then what? Having the resolve to try didn’t mean anything if she didn’t have some kind of destination in mind. There was a chance she’d stumble into another life-consuming corporate conspiracy but given how clean the Jakobs corporation kept itself relative to the rest of the corps it was low odds. Which meant she’d need a fallback.

At the end of the day, she couldn’t keep traipsing around the galaxy without a purpose. It was destroying her. Someone who’d been raised to fulfill a specific function for 27 years and immediately found an alternative and after that — she was too used to being goal-oriented to be anything else. She doubted it was healthy. It was her, though, it was who she’d always been. Either succeeding or taking clear steps toward success in order to feel accomplished and useful.

There was movement at the top of the stairs. Peering along the corridor she saw a silhouette with a tall hat step toward the light switch and flick it on. 

The bare bulb above them flared so bright Maya had to cover her eyes. “Ow — hey, don’t wake —“

“Please,” Moxxi grumbled, “he’s slept through worse. Last month a whole shelf of plates broke while he was asleep on the bar. Not a twitch.” She continued through the corridor to Maya’s doorway. “It’s dark outside and you’re hurting your eyes squinting.”

“No I’m not.”

She shook her head and tsked. “When you’re my age you’ll feel it.” Leaning inside she looked Krieg over. “Staff have the bar under control. He’s still out. Come onto the balcony for a minute.” Reaching under her tailcoat she produced a tiny bottle of vodka. “We’ll drink.”

The drink was… compelling. Moxxi knew how to grease the wheels. Of course ideally she would’ve brought something fruitier and softer, like a nice cider, or some plum wine, but alcohol was alcohol, was alcoholic, would help her relax. Or just depress her. She’d take that chance.

Somehow the music was louder outside. A song everyone knew the words to, so they bellowed it tunelessly at the roof and through the doors. On the opposite side of the thoroughfare an unrelated couple joined in with the chorus, along with a woman on another nearby balcony. It sounded terrible but it helped with the general atmosphere. 

Moxxi settled her elbows on the barrier and offered Maya the bottle. “Nice like this, huh?”

She accepted. “Sure.” The vodka sizzled her tongue and irritated her sinuses. “ _Ooh_.”

“Is it Krieg, the party, or was there some kind of trouble on Helios?”

“Huh?” Sensing where the conversation was headed she took an additional, hasty sip.

“Why you’re hiding upstairs.”

Third sip for good measure -- and as a stalling tactic -- before she returned the bottle. How long did hard liquor take to kick in? How long until she’d be tipsy enough for less avoidant answers? “I am a cool, smart, powerful woman.” 

“Smart and powerful, yes.” Moxxi reached for her upper arm reassuringly.

“A Siren. A Vault Hunter. A badass.”

“But?”

“Pandora doesn’t need any more of those,” she said, “unless they throw in a sweetener. Lilith’s a leader. I’m not.” Her taste buds bubbled like the surface of a simmering pot. “The galaxy doesn’t have any big rumours or problems at the moment either. If I could pivot to some kind of lines-drawn war between, I dunno, Atlas and Maliwan, I’d be there in a heartbeat. There’s none of that though. Just peace and quiet and people happy for a bit of normalcy. Which I don’t really…”

The exterior was lit with floodlights that left stark shadows and highlights. Tucked in an alcove, there was no direct light on the balcony, and Maya’s Siren tattoos had a visible blue aura like a stale glowstick. She touched her bare wrist with her gloved hand and traced the looping pattern.

“You’re lost,” Moxxi said.

Maya reached a dead-end on a whorl inside her inner elbow. “Obviously.” She reversed and looked for an alternate path. “Saying it feels stupid, though. ‘Maya can’t handle Vault Hunting when it’s an actual hunt’. C’mon. I’m just not a fan of aimless wandering.”

Shifting her grip onto the back of Maya’s gloved hand Moxxi forced her to stop tracing. “What about your homeworld?”

“This is it.” She frowned at the grip.

“No, sugar, the planet you’re from. Which was?”

Ugh. “I left on bad terms.”

“Everyone does, if they come here voluntarily. In that respect you’re normal. Running from a mistake or a problem?”

“Bit of both. Do we have to have this conversation? It sucked there.”

“Uh-uh. This issue’s been dominating you for most of a year. That’s a long session. Let’s get out of subspace and into a normal mindset. Having control of your life is important. Why did you leave?”

She winced and pulled herself free. Shuffling into the corner of the balcony to put space between them she found a new angle to perch at and resettled. “There was a cult. A man who used me. When I realised what he’d done I killed him and left.” Her tattoos intensified, fizzing as kinetic energy converted to heat and light. “The end.”

Acknowledging that Maya needed space, Moxxi retreated to the opposite corner. She stole a quick sip for courage before she replied, “was he the main issue?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “there was a real religion too — it got twisted around to justify what he did, but the whole planet’s a mecca for Siren worship and scholarship. Ruins, dig sites, libraries. Some of them take it to weird places but there’s also real faith and learning there and —“ She held her tattoos in front of her for study. “— yeah, I’ll always belong there, but it’s like how your sign belongs on your bar. Siren planet likes to have its Siren.”

“It does seem complicated. I’ll even admit, I don’t understand, not completely. But:” She leaned sideways so she could see Maya’s face past her raised hand. “It might be worth thinking about going back.”

“Figured that’s what you were working around to.”

“Clearly you need closure. Whether you get rid of the rest of them or make amends, you should at least consider a visit.”

In an effort to look relaxed and considerate she reclined so far she almost fell off the barrier and over the edge. Talking about Athenas should’ve made her angry or indignant but it mostly made her scared. She hated that. What self-respecting Vault Hunter felt fear?

… Krieg did. The USB was in her storage deck. He’d had the opportunity to destroy it and he hadn’t, despite the parts of him it showed, the pain and terror and loss belying his invulnerable exterior. He’d even had some kind of epiphany after he saw it. Whatever happened while they were separated on Helios the video was the catalyst.

“If I did and it went wrong —“

“Of course we’d be there,” Moxxi said with a smirk wide enough to crack her make-up, “even he’d be there. He’d cross the six galaxies for you if you were in real danger. Lucky gal.”

“Hah. We could catch a show on Dionysia after. Same system.”

“The ushers would hate him.”

“No.” Maya touched the deck on her hip, toggling the controls gently to avoid activating it. “For them he’d be quiet.”

Below, the sound system rolled into a power ballad and a portion of the audience booed. Someone cranked it louder in response. Heavy piano chords shook the balcony even harder than the preceding drums. There was a scuffle over the soundboard that launched the volume up and down a few more times before it settled on bring-down-the-house.

Moxxi groaned. “Those speakers were expensive.”

Even so, Maya had to smile. “And you thought they’d last? On Pandora?” This was her kind of song. _For a smile that can share the night, it goes on, and on, and on_ _, and on —_

“It’s the import tax. Doesn’t matter what the base price is, no-one likes delivering breakables here.” She sighed. “I’ll have the B-Team scavenge some replacements. You’re right, they were a bad investment.”

But Moxxi had already lost her. Tapping her feet and swaying her hips as the guitar came in she turned her smile to the sky and the stars overhead. She’d be out there again soon. For the moment she could at least try to enjoy some terrestrial pleasures. Rickety bars built out of containers and sheet iron. Piano played through speakers configured for electronica, warped and overcorrected into bass range. Maybe the whole place would fall apart. There was possibility in the air, in the atmosphere. That was why Dahl settled it after all: the frontier planets, the borderlands, where anything might happen.

Reconciliations with past foes, or past selves. Changes to belief and biology and the base parts that you thought made you. Answers to impossible questions: like, can I do this? Doesn’t matter if you can do it, what matters is you can try. 

Keep trying.

You’ll heal eventually. So will he.

🔪🔪🔪

The pale morning filtered through the blinds. As Krieg sat, its stuttering pattern of light strained his exposed eyes. His mask was gone. Fumbling around his person for it he discovered parts of his armour and a few of his other belongings had been removed too. He panicked, wheezing through his uncovered mouth, until his vision cleared and he realised most of his equipment was on the nightstand by the bed he’d been tucked into. As his breathing leveled out he peeled away the blanket and swung his legs over the side. “Exoskeleton, donuts, dinglehopper —“ he itemised, pointing at each in turn. 

_No mask, no axe._ It was right: the axe was gone too.

He huffed, a bit of spit flying out; he was used to the filter catching that. “No sharp objects aboard this flight.”

_Maya brought us in, so either she or Moxxi has it for safekeeping._

“Catch a falling saw and put it in your pocket,” he mumbled semi-tunefully as he rolled onto his feet, “save it for a bandit’s brain.” He splayed a hand over his chest to check yesterday’s damage. It felt right, just the usual scars and indentations, but as he glanced down for visual confirmation discovered the marks were still there: a Lichtenberg figure that’d get the other Vault Hunters talking. Obviously they’d all experienced a shock or two but it’d never left a mark like this. He traced the figure from the centre outward. Like an ugly tattoo of a tree.

While he was distracted by the sight of the red lines sprawling across his pale chest, the voice and his other senses tried to turn his attention elsewhere. _Hey. HEY. Do you smell that?_ it asked, his nose equally insistent: something oily and starchy rising from below. Fried potato or potato byproduct. 

Try as he might he could only ignore them so long. He stopped tracing. “The important meal,” he whispered reverently.

 _Full breakfast service._ It honed in on the individual elements. _Hash browns, grilled tomatoes, toast, eggs, black coffee._ The compulsion was strong. The hunger was real. His stomach groaned, or maybe some other organ that hadn’t recovered from the shock, didn’t matter; they were gonna eat.

Strapping himself into his armour, combing his bare scalp, and shoving his saw blades into his pocket damn the seams, he proceeded into the corridor.

Downstairs Moxxi stood over the stove in a tight romper — a kind of compromise between her bartending outfit and her overalls — and flipped eggs in an old steel pan. Maya sat at the bar on the other side of the divider, half-visible through the serving window, a glass of orange juice by her elbow.

Stood in front of them he suddenly realised he hadn’t found anything to cover his face. The blanket had been too thick to work with and there weren’t any curtains. Most of his bandages were gone except the ones that covered fresh wounds. He could always bleed on the floor but then they might take away his breakfast. Before anyone could acknowledge him he raised his arm in front of his face like a movie vampire. “Salutations, sunny side up!”

“And good morning to you too, sunshine,” Moxxi said, nudging the eggs into place and turning his way. “We’re glad you’re — what are you doing.” She mimicked his arm move.

“Bad meat,” he replied, “makes you puke.”

“It’s fine!” Maya leaned around to get a good look at him. “You can’t exactly eat doing a Dracula impression anyway.”

“Bleh!” But he lowered his arm. Negotiating the doorway he went to her side. 

She took the orange juice and moved it a bit further from both of them to avoid knocking it over. She glanced at the bar stool next to hers, then when he failed to react, patted it twice. 

After two missed attempts at sitting — blood low, balance poor, depth perception always bad slash non-existent — he got half his ass in place and shimmied the rest on. He stuck his arms in front of him and buried his chin in between them, slouched over the counter. That, at least, kept his lower face hidden. “Burrito,” he said, “everything becomes a cosy slurry inside.”

“The blanket wasn’t overkill, then?”

“Heat in the microwave, liquify, chilli con carne.”

“Yooou’ve lost me.”

“Mince.” He raised his hands without lifting any of the rest of his upper body, gesturing for emphasis. “Is a comfortable liquid.”

Lots of subtle noises in the bar that morning. The sizzling pan. The whooshing ceiling fan. The whining sheet metal, expanding as the sun heated it through. Their chairs squeaking on their rotating bearings. He inhaled. He exhaled. He took in the noises. Stretching his arms further he heard a pop from his shoulder joints as they clicked into place. He adjusted his neck and shoulder blades too. In the moment and somewhere familiar. The stress of being on Helios was fading. She was right beside him. They were safe together.

Finishing a swig of juice Maya cleared her throat loudly. “We managed to keep the pool cleaner intact, so go us.” She tried to hi-five him, but he was too slow on the uptake, and she settled for patting his forearm instead. “I’m pretty sceptical about the informant’s, uh, information though. They might know approximately where a Vault is but I doubt we’ll get closer than the country or state.” Slouching, she let her hair fall in front of her face. “I’m no archaeologist, so…”

 _The ball’s in Tannis’ court. Or the Jakobs family, if they wanna play._ “Running is pointless?”

“I’m still going, if that’s what you mean. It’s just hard to tell where or when. The transports are pretty infrequent at the moment so it’ll be a few days until I can leave Pandora.” 

“Hrrrngh,” he groaned. He raised his face and turned to look at her. The dried scabs felt disgusting, big gritty lines drawn across his features; she’d seen them often enough on the trip home that she didn’t flinch or frown. “Can’t follow,” he said, “cards and flowers at the spaceport for our lucky graduate.”

If he could do that much, she could make sure to call.

Moxxi rounded the divider with two cups of coffee in hand. She set them in front of the pair and thumbed over her shoulder at the kitchen. “Frying the bacon, almost done.”

“Juice _and_ coffee? Moxxi, this is too much,” Maya said, trying to sound kind but obviously more uneasy about the flavour profile than the effort that’d gone into it.

“If you don’t want it, just leave it, I figured since the pot was full might as well pour an extra cup.” 

“Free refills!” Krieg cheered on delay and thrust his coffee cup into the air, almost hitting her.

She dodged a step sideways, and after a brief pause to confirm she’d succeeded, made her escape around the divider. 

Rather than sip, he brought the cup back to his face and tipped the whole lot into his mouth. It scalded his tongue but in turn served coffee’s truest purpose and woke him as awake as he could get. “Why bother with smoke alarms? Burn your flesh for maximum alertness!” He stared at Maya’s serving. “Orange coffee, black juice; it’s a disaster.” He walked his fingers over the countertop towards it. “Disaster relief is at hand —”

“Yeah, take it,” she said. 

He swallowed that in a single mouthful too. “Crisis averted.” _Yeah, except for how bad our digestion’s gonna be._

Leaning with her face on her palm she continued her juice. “Hey, so. Since we’re agreed on what’s happening and have some time until it happens — wanna take a trip together?”

“Trip on a banana peel?” he asked, “acid trip? Trip-hop?”

“That oasis we drove past.”

“Tickets for two?”

“Could bring the whole team,” she said, eyes glazing over. Her juice was almost finished. “If it turns out to be a mirage we’d look pretty stupid though. It might be best if it’s just us.” Or was she avoiding his gaze? “How would you feel? Driving there on our own.”

He let out a laugh. By most standards it was long and unsettling but for him, not so much. They could trust her to know that. “Never any privacy.” _What am I, your chaperone?_ “Shut up, dad!”

“Yeah.” She drank the last few drops. “I know.” As she turned to look, she reached out and took his hand. Light pulsed from her tattoos and their pattern made a warm impression against his skin. Her eyes glowed to match. 

The division between the three of them dissolved from their hands outward as they held each other. How he knew he couldn’t say — not even because he was inarticulate, but because of how foreign the situation was, like it needed another language to be described — there was a flicker across the surface of her irises and she was reacting to the voice as it shifted inside him. A Matryoshka of Kriegs: it was smaller, that was how it hid inside his frame, his original height and breadth. It felt pleased with itself as it realised she’d found it.

“Toot toot, beep beep?” he ventured in an attempt to bring her attention back to him.

She flinched. “Beep beep,” she said, as she released her grip, refocused herself, and met his one-eyed stare.

☄️☄️☄️

The oasis was real. Not bad, either. A round hole in the centre of the desert bored so deep, past the sand and into rock, that the bottom was impossible to see. Standing on the boulders around the edge brought an unavoidable sense of vertigo. Fall into the water. Keep falling. Into eternity. Forever. 

Maya staggered back from the precipice with a tiny, suppressed gasp. She wasn’t ready to go yet. Regardless: she stripped her pants and boots, leaving her in a leotard that could almost pass for a swimsuit. Lycra was lycra right? The lagoon wasn’t chlorinated or anything. There was no reason it’d damage the fabric. If it did, eh, she’d had this gear for years. Overdue for a change.

Krieg loomed behind her in a pair of orange shorts. Weirdly he’d been the sensible one and swapped his pants out before they left the Backburner. Though maybe that wasn’t so weird anymore. During breakfast she’d put her hand on his and felt a synaesthetic twinge; there was a feeling in it like the sound of his voice on Helios and the smile on his face in the videos. A presence had awoken. Or if it hadn’t awoken it’d grown. More of it present every day. Soon it’d be impossible to contain… if he could hold onto his progress and not backslide.

They both had to work not to backslide. If he could, she could. Vice-versa. 

She laid their belongings out on the rock, with an open umbrella tilted over the top to keep the drinks they’d brought as cool as possible. Satisfied with the placement of everything she rotated to face the water again. “How about that?” she asked, knelt on the rock with her hands planted alongside her knees for stability.

“Undrinkable,” he replied, arms folded and tense. While setting his shorts at the Quick-Change he’d opted for bandanna and a baseball cap in lieu of a full mask. His face was covered but he didn’t need to yell. Best of both worlds, arguably. To stay on the level with her he dropped into a squat. “Swim deep into hell. Dare, double-dare. Meet the devil.”

“And what? Fight him? Thought we were here for some peace and quiet.”

“War is loud!”

“Hey.” She reached back and gave his knee a pat. “Chill.” The water was perfectly still. Unless he wanted to cut it to subatomic particles there was nothing to attack. Though the depth meant she couldn’t be sure it’d stay that way. “Who’ll jump first?”

He gripped his chin under the bandanna and thought about it for a moment. “You and me, Little Man makes three.”

“All together?” She kept a steady hold on him.

“Hmph!” He nodded and assented.

In a smooth movement he stood, collecting her from the ground as he went, so he held her scooped in his arms, thick enough to provide a comfortable seat. Stood over the several-foot drop he looked to her for a sign to jump.

She hooked an arm around the nape of his neck and let the other dangle, hung from him at an angle like a climbing gym. Checking the water once more — let’s be really, really, really sure we won’t hit anything — she gave a thumbs up.

They broke the surface with legendary force and sank far, far under. The descent seemed to last forever. The upper layers of the lagoon were warm but they went further than the light could — into darkness, and cold. The surge of bubbles and motion around them slowed until there was nothing but water. He lost his hat somewhere but he didn’t lose her. Soon she was the only light and he was the only warmth. Clinging to each other seemed more urgent than when they’d leapt.

But as the adrenaline rush subsided the urgency did too. They didn’t let go, but they separated a bit, hands clasped as their bodies floated apart. 

There was just enough glow from her tattoos to see his face by. To get a clearer view she drifted forward and moved to touch his cheek. The look in his remaining eye was so different to when they met; it used to quiver, constantly, like an animal on watch for prey (or predators) but now it held contact. He leaned into her palm and, with some effort, closed the eye, forcing himself to relax. 

Running out of air. She was running out of air. Likely he was too though he didn’t show any sign. But the lagoon went deeper and they hadn’t even glimpsed the bottom yet. It was so unfair that people had to breathe.

She released him and kicked toward the sun. Bursting through she waited… waited… waited for him to appear too.

Just as she was about to swim for the edge she felt two sets of fingers clamp around her right foot. She yelped in surprise even as she realised what was going on, his mock-jaws ascending her leg a bite at a time. He stopped at her hip and surfaced yelling “CHOMP!”

With a hoarse laugh she used her powers to sweep a huge wave over his head.

He gurgled and spat as it subsided. “Can’t drown! Undefeated! Back for the sequel!” He struggled between wet breaths.

Extending her hand she drew him toward the lower rock shelf that was accessible from the water. It was flat and offered plenty of space to loll about, like a natural pool-side. Hitching herself on she lay with her legs in the lagoon.

In a similar pose he lay beside her. His body temperature was so high the water was already evaporating from his skin. At least diving in had cleaned his wounds. Some sunbathing might help heal them.

“Took your sweet time in there,” she said.

“Empty.” A simple, coherent answer that made it hard to tell which Krieg was speaking.

“No monsters?”

He gestured to himself. “Wouldn’t want to find us under the bed.”

“Dunno. Some people might.” 

Silent, they stayed together under the sun a while, and the oasis respected that. Though they’d driven through a few ambushes to get there the immediate area was empty. As long as they were here there wouldn’t be any trouble.

She kicked her feet in a series of loud splashes. “I kind of wanna see for myself. How deep it goes.” Splosh-splosh, splosh-splosh. She didn’t doubt him, she just — you know?

He knew. He was approvingly inert. “Don’t die.” 

“I won’t.” Slipping back in she was pleased to learn she’d acclimated to the cold. Swimming to the centre of the lagoon she trod water, counting a few seconds grace in case he changed his mind and wanted to join her. 

No. He sat up so he could watch but he didn’t move. 

So she took a huge breath, flipped upside down, and began her descent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many many moons later: final chapter!
> 
> bit of context for that. Back in February I moved to another country, but the pandemic threw a bunch of wrenches in getting established there and I had to come home. Given the premise of the fic working on it was... kind of sore for a while and whenever I opened it to edit the final chapter I just got angry. This is about the fourth iteration of the final chapter after several I didn't like. Finally...!
> 
> of course, this is here now because of The DLC. Regardless of how I feel about the specifics (petition to bring back Dr Samuels! The new guy is so generic!) it was nice (and inspiring) to see Krieg again after so many years without him in canon. The beautiful thing about conflicting origin stories between BL2 and BL3 is that now everything's made up and the facts don't matter. In this universe of chaos the only thing we can cling to is Psyren.
> 
> if you're reading this, thanks for coming back after the long hiatus, and probably see you around with more fic sometime ?soon?


End file.
